Judge Lucy Koh has denied Apple’s request that she sanction Samsung for releasing evidence to the public that she had denied for the trial. Apple had accused Samsung’s lead attorney, John Quinn, of trying taint the jury by releasing the data, but Judge Koh declined to sanction Samsung for the maneuver.
She did, however, retain the right to consider the issue further, but more than likely the issue is dead as far as Judge Koh is concerned. The San Jose Mercury News reported that she made the decision after polling each individual jury member on whether or not they had seen any news relating to the trial since they had last been in court on July 31st.
Samsung argued in court on Wednesday that it didn’t do anything wrong, and that releasing the evidence to the public was not only legal and appropriate, it was in keeping with Judge Koh’s commitment that this case would be open in keeping with the public’s great interest in the outcome.
Judge Koh’s rejection of Apple’s request for a sanction came despite reports that she was livid about Samsung’s actions. The Washington Post reported that Judge Koh said as part of her ruling that she was satisfied the jury could remain “fair and impartial.”
The evidence that Samsung believes is so important involves a designer who was tasked by Sir Jonathan Ive—currently Apple’s Senior VP of Industrial Design—to show what an iPhone designed by Sony might look like. Samsung believes this is proof that Apple actually copied Sony, which would then absolve Samsung of any charges that it copied Apple for some of its own Android smartphones.
The evidence was excluded because it was submitted after the discovery phase of the trial, and Judge Koh has been rigorous of enforcing the rules she established for the proceedings. Samsung has maintained that this evidence is critical to its case, so critical it didn’t submit it on time.
“The excluded evidence would have established beyond doubt that Samsung did not copy the iPhone design,” Samsung’s attorneys wrote in a statement accompanying the evidence release to the press. “Fundamental fairness requires that the jury decide the case based on all the evidence.”
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The evidence also includes a timeline of the Samsung phone model line-up going back some 20 years. It wholly refutes the narrative of the “Samsung before and after” picture that Apple entered into evidence by demonstrating that a rectangular phone dominated by the screen was a natural evolutionary step as bigger screens became cheaper to make.
Oh, and Quinn owned Judge Koh. The smart thing for Apple’s lawyers to have done would have been to just let it go and not look like whiners.
Bosco - don’t be so naive. If the evidence so ” wholly refutes” Apple’s claims, they would not be in court as neither Apple or their council are that incompetent to engage such a costly action as this to lose to a mere picture. The story is still unfolding and design is only a part of a much bigger picture.
Regardless who had the “iPhone” look in the labs first, it is tue that Samsung’s entire product map shifted once the iPhone was so well received by the public.
joelgs23: I’m guessing you weren’t around the last time Apple sued a competitor for “stealing” its “look and feel”. It didn’t turn out so well for Apple that time, and the company that beat Apple in court eventually bailed Apple out with a loan.
The other utterly ridiculous thing about the contention that Samsung slavishly copies is that Apple appears to be following Samsung’s lead on 7” tablets (see Eddie Cue) and larger handsets. How is that not slavish copying?
Come on, Brad…
Apple’s suit against Microsoft was based on a copyright claim, not a patent claim.
Apple did not lose that suit due to the invalidity of its claim, but rather because Microsoft successfully proved in court that an agreement with Apple licensing that look and feel was good in perpetuity, rather than, as Apple thought, for one version of Windows only.
It is an apple-to-oranges comparison.
You have me scratching my head, Brad.
Apple isn’t isn’t accusing Apple of “slavishly copying” Samsung for releasing a smartphone or a 10” tablet. Apple is accusing Samsung of deliberately making its products look like Apple’s iconic design, both in software and hardware.
Apple is clearly pleased to have competition, but Apple wants that competition to do its own design and their own innovation.
Your comment simply makes no sense.
LMAO. What’s new?!?!?
And still referencing the Microsoft/Apple thing? So beneath you, Brad. Just like you referenced it Jan 31, 2011?
Obviously recent history has not occurred as you suspected. So explain to us why the iPad and the iPhone are not like the 1992 Mac. Please? Why isn’t the iPad declining and mostly irrelevant yet?
There are three forms of IP protected under US law: patents, trademarks, and copyright. Note that “iconicalism” isn’t among those. So, after Apple lost its bid to hold up its iconicalism to Microsoft on copyright, it sought to patent thousands of trivial “innovations” that few in the 1990s thought were fair game for patent protection. 15 years later, they are suing over using regular expressions to identify what selected text might be, and presenting dynamic options of things to do with the selection. This is, at worst, upper division computer science curriculum “technology” and “innovation”, and Apple is suing HTC and Samsung all over the world over “data detectors”, then getting on its high horse about how this violates Apple’s iconicalism, which isn’t even a protectable form of IP. Or the rectangular tablet with little ornamentation on the front other than a bezel. In Europe, Apple obtained design patents for this, even though it describes shrinking down just about any flat panel TV on the market since the mid 1990s. This, too, is part of the iconicalism Apple thinks it can protect. It is absurd on its face, Bryan.
... Bryan you say that like it’s supposed to mean something…
Look, Apple didn’t sue on patents then, because software wasn’t patentable at that time, it only became patentable in 1996 (after several court cases). Copyright was the only intellectual property right they could assert….
I said it because Brad was asserting that the patent trials would fail just like the last time Apple tried to protect its look and feel.
It’s an apples to oranges comparison?the two battles have nothing to do with one another.
Apple could well fail and lose these cases, but it still won’t have anything to do with the Microsoft/Windows battle.
Brad, you are throwing up straw man arguments, cherry picking and then mix-and-matching aspects of these battles to build the straw men.
Is Apple suing over a data detector patent? Yes. Has Apple ever asserted in either the courts or the court of public opinion that the data detector patent is part of its iconic anything?
No. Obviously not.
The data detector patent infringement claims are an excellent example of the minutiae of the current patent system being leveraged as part of a far larger battle, but in no universe can it be argued that it is representative of Apple’s battle against to protect its design, hardware, and software innovation. It’s the exception, not the rule.
And I recognize that you like to assert that Apple’s design work is a “picture frame,” or now a shrunken down TV, but I simply can not find common ground with you.
Apple’s devices clearly have a distinctive look. Most other companies have managed to design tablets that don’t look like Apple’s devices. Samsung’s devices, though, were clearly intended to look just like them, and I find it befuddling that you would deny this.
It’s one thing to argue that design shouldn’t be protected (an abhorrent thought), but it’s another to deny that some of Samsung’s devices look just like Apple’s.
... Bryan, I took Bosco’s meaning to be that Apple is overeaching it’s rights just like it did in the previous Microsoft v. Apple case.
There’s Apples and Oranges and then there’s Macintoshes and Granny Smiths…
But that’s a reading that doesn’t draw on actual history.
Apple lost that case because Microsoft successfully proved in course that a license for the Mac’s look and feel that Apple thought was good for only one version of Windows was read as being good for perpetuity.
That case proved that Bill Gates was better at writing contracts than John Scully (or their peeps, of course), not that Apple over-reached its rights.
We don’t know how that court case would have gone had that contract not existed.
Thus apples-to-oranges.
Pop quiz Bryan… Samsung was “late” 3 times in discovery. By how many days was Samsung late in each of the three times? What particular pressure would have been put on the court to accommodate this tardiness to make all evidence available to the jury?
Brad, this is another straw man. Most big time trials have discovery rules, and having a judge stick to them is SOP.
It’s lucky for Samsung that the excluded evidence is absurd and does little or nothing to prove their case. Imagine if it had been a real smoking gun.
I say Bryan, have you been listening to Nilay Patel?
I haven’t, daemon. Should I? Or was I subconsciously channeling him?
What are your thoughts on this evidence? Do you think it proves Samsung’s point?
I think the F700 helps show the design aesthetic that was emerging in 2006 for a slate phone. Keep in mind the cutting edge of design was the LG Prada phone that was shown off and won the International Forum Design award for 2007. As an iteration on the production line of phones that Samsung has manufactured it could help demonstrate how Samsung got from the SPH-I300 in 2001 to the Galaxy S in 2010.
(Did you know that SPH-I300 violates Apple’s design patent, despite predating Apple’s design patent by six years?) The more you know…
The F700 is an interesting device, to be sure. It was announced in February of 2007, a bit more than a month after the iPhone was shown to the world. That would suggest it had been in development for many months before the iPhone…
...until you consider that it didn’t ship for many months after its announcement. Here’s an Android site’s take on the story. In debunking Samsung defenders, they point to March 2007 YouTube videos that talk about how even then the device being shown “exclusively” looked like early prototype hardware.
I have no doubt that a device that became known as the F700 was in development for some time before the iPhone was introduced. If I could wager in a way where we could know the absolute truth, I’d put my money on Samsung taking that device and (clumsily) modifying the front face to look like the iPhone.
It’s certainly possible that’s not the case, but I’d sure hate to hang my hat on this device as the proof of anything relating to this case.
As for the SPH-I300, I don’t think it looks like the iPhone. Is Apple asserting that it violated its iPhone design patent? Has any court ruled that it violates Apple’s design patent? I call shenanigans if so.
Bryan, I’m mearly pointing out that Apple’s iPhone design patent is so broad that even the ancient SPH-I300 violate’s it. Keep in mind, Apple’s design patent does not claim the rounded corners, the size of the bevel, even if there is a bevel, the thickness of the device, whether there’s any buttons whatsoever, only a screen is claimed in Apple’s iPhone design patent. It’s ridiculously broad…
What an incredibly sad video. Let’s have an intern ambush a Samsung Rep outside the convention hall and beg her to let them video the F700 in action….
Here’s what I get from the video: The rep didn’t know anything about the phone at all, (she definetly wasn’t Steve Jobs with the iPhone) it’s screen looked to be continously timing out, because she didn’t even know she had to unlock the screen. The interface looked like an early version of Samsung’s Bada OS. Looking into it, it was the Croix UI and won a design award at the International Forum for 2007, the same design convention that the LG Prada phone came out at.
When Apple tries to assert this design patent against products like the SPH-I300 that clearly do not in any way resemble Apple’s products, I will join you in condemning the company.
Instead, Apple is asserting this design patent against devices that were clearly intended to look like (and therefore trade off the success of) Apple’s own products.
In addition, I can not imagine the court that would ever allow Apple to assert this patent against a device like the SPH-I300 (ignoring the fact that it’s an older device). It would be laughed out of court.
Apple’s design patent doesn’t exist in a void where Apple gets to bock every “picture frame” on the planet. It exists to protect specific products.
As most other companies have proven time and again, there are plenty of ways to design smartphones and tablets that don’t look like Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Even Samsung has done so.
The ones that do resemble Apple’s devices, though, infringe and are, IMO, indefensible.
I was less interested in the merits of the video as a piece of journalism (I mostly agree with you), but rather the video as anecdotal evidence questioning the timing of Samsung’s development track for the F700.
As I noted earlier, I wouldn’t want to hang my hat on that device proving much of anything in the Apple/Samsung battle.
One can definitely say that when closed it resembles the iPhone. One can not definitively prove that it looked like before the iPhone was shown, while its release schedule of many months after its debut adds weight to those who say its development track was altered by the iPhone’s introduction.
But either way, it’s proof of little
The significance of the release schedule in the states, because the international version was released before the iPhone, is only relevant when you ignore the history of US carriers delibrately delaying and customizing handsets for themselves before launching them here in the US.
Even Apple ran afoul of this when they were looking to launch the iPhone.
I see why Apple has its panties in a bunch and wants to undo history now. South of 17%? Less than 1/4 the unit sales of Android phones? IDC excusing Apple’s results for lack of churn and options?
You sure love that “panties in a bunch” comment. Makes you wonder…
Who says that Apple is concerned? 71% of the profit on 17% share in Q2. And when Apple cashes that US$2.5 billion Samsung check, that will probably sway the profit percentages a bit too.
And all will be well again when the MY2013 iPhone is released and Apple stock prices head north of the current $623 per share!! Life is good.
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