11.10.12
Apple in Trouble in US and UK Over Deception, Required to Compensate Samsung Financially
Summary: Apple litigation against Android leads to annoyed judges and Samsung is expecting to receive more than just an apology from Apple
Apple got into some deep trouble due to the foreman and the apparent trial misconduct. He was acting in bad faith much to Apple’s benefit. TechDirt remarks on the news in its usual great style:
After the jury decision in the Apple/Samsung patent fight in the US came out, lots of people pointed to statements from the foreman of the jury, Vel Hogan, that raised serious questions about Hogan’s understanding of the legal issues at play, especially pertaining to prior art. It also suggested possible bias. Still, even with all of that, it’s very, very difficult to get a jury ruling thrown out on jury misconduct — but Samsung has unveiled one bit of info that Judge Lucy Koh has now agreed to review: whether or not Hogan needed to reveal that he had a legal dispute with Seagate, a former Hogan employer, who is also a major strategic partner of Samsung.
The person is pictured in this article. Here’s what Pamela Jones wrote:
The Hon. Lucy Koh has ruled [PDF], sort of, on Samsung’s motion to compel Apple to reveal when it learned about the jury foreman not answering fully in voir dire. By sort of, I mean she says she will hear oral argument about it on December 6th, along with everything else, and then if she grants Samsung’s motion to compel, she’ll likely order fuller briefing before ruling on Samsung’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, another motion already before her that will be argued on December 6th also.
I know. It seems like a kick the can down the road order. True, she’s really busy, and she doesn’t want to make a mistake. A lot is riding on this. She also probably doesn’t want to read any more briefs than she really needs to, but normally Samsung would get to respond to Apple’s opposition, so it’s a little strange. California needs to fund its courts and create an atmosphere where judges can work without being overburdened. But the upside for Samsung is that she’s apparently taking their motion seriously, despite Apple’s opposition, and she did not deny it out of hand. But she could have granted the motion without oral argument as well. Considering how hard it is to establish jury misconduct, though, I’d call this a win for Samsung, or more accurately that Samsung has made it over the first hurdle, with more to come on the 6th. If any of you can make it for the hearing, that’d be important, I think. That’s in San Jose, California, Dec. 6 at 1:30 PM. If you can go, email me please, and we’ll talk.
More to the point about Apple’s abuse, watch this report on Apple’s admission of lies and deception:
Apple has come in for blistering criticism from judges at the court of appeal for its “lackadaisical” compliance with their order to publish newspaper adverts and website acknowledgements that Samsung did not infringe its registered designs for a tablet.
Meanwhile, the company has quietly removed the Javascript code on its UK webpage that kept hidden the acknowledgement “below the fold” of the site, no matter how big a screen it was viewed on.
The full ruling of the court of appeal hearing on 1 November shows the judges to be furious at Apple’s attempts to stall on the acknowledgements and its addition of “false and misleading” additions to the statement that Apple was originally to put up.
The Apple deception and insincere apology were mentioned here before. Jones writes:
The UK Court Sanctions Apple, Hopes “Lack of Integrity” In Notice Incident Is Not “Typical”
The latest order has been published now by the UK court that ordered Apple to place a notice on its website and in newspapers and magazines stating that the court had found that Samsung had not copied Apple’s design patent. Since Apple did not comply with the order in its estimation, adding materials that were not ordered and in addition were “false”, the judges ordered Apple to pay Samsung’s lawyers’ fees on an indemnity basis, and they add some public humiliation
TechDirt covers this as follows:
UK Court Furious At Apple Dragging Its Heels Over Samsung Court Order
[...]
Perhaps it’s because Apple is finally realizing that the UK judge was really furious at Apple for its handling of this whole situation. The full ruling from the judge that made Apple change the statement has been released, and it shows that the court sees that Apple is dragging its feet and doing everything it can to avoid fully complying. Furthermore, it directly calls out the original statement for providing “false and misleading” information. As some UK court observers noted, the judges are clearly not happy with Apple, which seemed to think its standard reality distortion field might work on judges as well as the public.
Apple carries on patenting basic ideas, but not outside the US, the country where rounded rectangles are seen as patentable.
As this new article puts it, there is too much of a patent mess in the US for one to make smartphones peacefully, especially since software gets tied to hardware:
There are over 250,000 patents and 5 million claims at play inside your pocket. Many smart folks think that’s a bit nuts.
Many of these patents are utter junk, but nobody has the financial incentive to challenge them. It’s just a load of nonsense, sometimes lumped together with something less trivial to invalidate.
After the collateral damage that Steve Jobs and his gang had caused Apple is ordered to also pay Samsung, although not much:
In addition, if you remember there were quite a lot of sanctions against each company. Each party was supposed to pay for discovery issues. Samsung has beaten Apple as Apple has to pay an amount of $160,069.00 as the sanction award from the court’s July 11 order. On the contrary Samsung will have to pay only $21,554.14 as the sanction award from the court’s April 23 order.
Using VirnetX as a distraction, Apple is being described as the victim in patent battles by pro-Apple sites and the Microsoft boosters, who write:
Three days ago, Apple was ordered to pay $368.2 million for infringing domain name security and virtual private network patents for its FaceTime service. Now, it turns out the same company that beat Apple in that case—VirnetX—filed a new lawsuit against the iPhone maker on the very same day.
Apple is hardly the victim of patents as a whole; it is just part of a biased and misleading narrative. We need to counter this distraction/diversion. We also need to boycott Apple. █
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Michael said,
November 10, 2012 at 10:39 pm
Who in the public is saying it was OK for Apple to lie in their first court-ordered comments about Samsung?
Even when Apple is in the wrong, as they were with that, you feel the need to lie about the situation. I wish, Roy, you could be honest about tech news. You lie repeatedly.
And if you read the comments on your site you will see you have your own “reality distortion field” – lemmings who buy your BS paranoid lies.