Apple v. Samsung: As Trial Reaches Mid-Way Point, Apple Rests its Case and Samsung Begins
Sam Reynolds — August 14th, 2012



Apple rested its case against Samsung in the multi-billion dollar Apple v. Samsung trial Monday, but not until Samsung was able to obtain a minor victory from the court.

Presiding Judge Lucy Koh ruled that three of Samsung’s allegedly patent-infringing phones were to be excluded from the trial: the Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S i9000, and the Galaxy S II i9100.

Samsung tried to use this as leverage to ask for a Judgment as a Matter of Law that Apple hasn’t proven its case by not providing enough conclusive detail about Samsung’s infringements, but Judge Koh denied this motion.

“I’m going to let a jury ultimately decide these questions,” Judge Koh said.

During the proceedings on Monday, Apple’s patent chief, Boris Teksler, make an interesting disclosure when he told the courts Apple was in negotiations with Microsoft to license patents — a stark contrast from the usual protective party line.

This agreement would come with a provision that no copying of Apple’s products could take place.

“There’s a clear acknowledgment that there is no cloning as part of this provision,” Mr. Teksler said.

While both companies were tight lipped about any further details, Microsoft may be ensuring that its upcoming Surface tablet does not get dragged down with allegations of patent improprieties.

Apple’s final witness, Terry Musika, was an accountant who was a long time veteran of a number of major consultancies. Mr. Musika explained how Apple arrived at the figure it claims Samsung owes it in damages, by explaining the company tallied losses from each sale of 22.7 million Samsung smartphones and tablets sold around the world. Should Samsung be found guilty of infringement of all of Apple’s patents and trade dress, the final figure calculated by Mr. Musika and his team would range between $2.5 billion and $2.75 billion.

Samsung was quick to point out that a sale of one of its smartphones or tablets isn’t necessarily a lost sale for Apple. Samsung pointed at its own research which showed that customers returned Galaxy devices because of bugs, not because they thought they were getting an iPhone or iPad. Samsung further argued to the court that Apple’s own market research showed that customers sometimes purchased a Samsung device over an Apple device because they did not want to switch carriers.

With Apple resting its case, Samsung began its arguments Monday afternoon trying to convince the jury that many of Apple’s patents in dispute are actually “prior art” — not original.

First on the stand for Samsung was Ben Bederson, the creator of an application for Pocket-PCs called “Launch Tile”. The purpose of Launch Tile was to allow for one-handed PDA operation because of zooming and a bounce back feature that is similar to Apple’s “rubber band” iOS patent in dispute.

After Mr. Bederson concluded his testimony Samsung called up Adam Bogue, a researcher who assisted in the creation of a multitouch tabletop computer called Diamond Touch.

Mr. Bogue said his company gave a number of units to Apple for research purposes in 2003.

Again trying to argue that Apple’s multitouch patents are in fact prior art, Samsung demonstrated that an app developed for the Diamond Touch platform — called FractalZoom — allows users to move an object with one-finger and use a two-finger gesture to zoom in and out.

Samsung continued its witness testimony on Tuesday, calling up Dr. Woodward Yang, a Harvard professor at its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Dr. Yang had previously served at a patent consultant for Samsung, who had discovered that Apple infringed three of Samsung’s patents relating to email, photo, and music features.

When Dr. Yang finished his testimony, he was immediately grilled by Apple’s lawyer William Lee in cross-examination. Mr. Lee argued that Samsung wasn’t actually using any of the patents it accuses Apple of infringing upon in its smartphones, and therefore Apple’s copying of said patents was simply coincidence.

“In your 400 hours of work, you have not found one iota of evidence that Apple knew about the ’893 patent [photo-bookmarking patent], or copied the ’893 patent,” Mr. Lee said.

Apple v. Samsung continues this week in San Jose.