Filip Novotny The second act of the patent war between Apple and Samsung is slowly coming to an end. After a month of court proceedings, representatives of both companies gave their closing arguments yesterday and are now awaiting the jury's verdict. While Apple highlighted the amount of effort and risk involved in developing the iPhone, Samsung tried to downplay the value of its rival's patents.
"Let's not forget how we got here," Apple's general counsel, Harold McElhinny, told the judges. "We're here because of a series of decisions by Samsung Electronics that copied iPhone features from phone to phone." He based these claims on internal Samsung documents released during the trial surfaced. In them, the employees of the Korean company (or its American branch) directly compared their products with the iPhone and called for functional and design changes based on its model.
“These documents show what the people at Samsung were really thinking. They didn't expect that one day it could become public," McElhinny continued, explaining to the judges why this process is so important to Apple.
"Time changes everything. It may seem unimaginable today, but back then the iPhone was an extremely risky project," Elhinny said, referring to the period around 2007 when the first Apple phone was introduced. At the same time, the court process was the last solution for the Californian company - at least according to its main lawyer. "Apple cannot let its innovation lie," McElhinny added, appealing to the jury to do justice. There and according to the indictment in the form of 2,191 billion dollars.
[do action=”citation”]Steve Jobs declared in October 2010 that it was necessary to declare a holy war on Google.[/do]
This time the other side bet on a completely different tactic. Instead of Samsung handing out a number of patents for which, like Apple, it would require high compensation, it chose only two. At the same time, he estimated the value of both patents, which the Korean company acquired by purchase in 2011, at only 6,2 million dollars. With this, Samsung is trying to send a signal that even Apple's patents are not of high value. This opinion directly he uttered and one of the witnesses called by the defense.
Another tactic of Samsung was to try to transfer part of the responsibility to Google. "Every patent that Apple claims was infringed in this case is infringed already in the base version of Google Android," said Samsung lawyer Bill Price. He and his colleagues even to court they invited several Google employees who were supposed to confirm his claim.
"We know that Steve Jobs said in October 2010 that there was a need to declare a holy war on Google," Price continued, emphasizing that Apple's main target is actually the manufacturer of the Android operating system, not Samsung. Apple's lawyers rejected this: "You won't find a single question about Google in your forms," McElhinny countered, saying the defense was just trying to distract and confuse the jury.
There are currently several long days of deliberation and decision making. Jurors are tasked with completing a twelve-page verdict form that includes more than 200 individual decisions. They will have to decide on every patent, every phone, and in many cases must distinguish between Samsung's Korean headquarters and its American marketing and telecommunications branches. Jurors will now meet every day until they reach a unanimous decision.
You can read more information about the patent fight between Apple and Samsung in our introductory message.
Samsung lies in statistics, cheats in performance tests, slanders in advertisements, copies one feature after another from Apple. It's just a different philosophy, a different mentality. I don't have European and American culture. I have no concept of intellectual property. Kind of like doing a copy of everything. Actually, they are poor people.
It's not so black and white. Above all, Samsung steals the design. Apple, on the other hand, steals technology and has been convicted of this several times in court cases with Samsung. Unfortunately, in the US, Apple doesn't have to worry, because one sheep in the White House will forgive it.