Judge Suggests Apple Is "Smoking Crack" With Witness List In Samsung Case 318
infodragon writes "Today in the ongoing Apple vs Samsung court case Judge Lucy Koh's patience wore thin as Apple presented a 75-page document highlighting 22 witnesses it would like to call in for rebuttal testimony, provided the court had the time. As those following the case closely know quite well, the case has a set number of hours which are already wearing quite thin. As quoted by The Verge as they sat in the courtroom listening in, Koh wondered aloud why Apple would offer the list 'when unless you're smoking crack you know these witnesses aren't going to be called!'"
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
court strategy for jury (Score:4, Insightful)
This is infront of a jury.
"We had 22 witnesses ready, but were denied time to present their testimony"
"They were ready to say all sorts of things to support us"
It is all about getting the jury on your side. Being "unable to present your case" is one such method.
And the other side cannot cross examine imagined testimony.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
in favor of Apple.
Now I think her wild mood swings must mean she's medicating?
No, she has just gotten to know Apple better than she did before.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Judges become judges so they judge the exciting world of Patent Ownership rights.
She is probably just pissed at the entire case, and trying to do her best to keep fair headed.
Apple is strong on these patents because of apples previous history. They made the Apple Macintosh, they didn't file all their patents, and got eaten alive by their competitors.
Samsung is trying to keep their products innovative and new. And a lot of apples patents are not really as impressive as Apple says.
To be a Judge where you are probably more interested in making sure every one get fair justice. These cases seem like petty bickering over nothing. However there are laws on the books and need to be followed.
Re:The Reality Distortion Field (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple caught buying expert witness for 75k$ (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lack of judicial temperament (Score:5, Insightful)
A judge isn't supposed to be hassling and berating the lawyers on both sides like this.
When both sides deserve it, a fair judge should hassle and berate both sides. Justice isn't well served by tolerating games.
Re:Lack of judicial temperament (Score:5, Insightful)
A judge isn't supposed to be hassling and berating the lawyers on both sides like this.
Interesting choice of words. So you'd be ok with it if it was just one sided berating? Judges have done far worse to lawyers when they start resorting to court room theatrics like Apple and Samsung. Berating both sides just shows fairness, and that both sides are being asses.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
Two points.
One: this is a jury trial. As such, there are twelve jurors, private citizens like yourself, who have their lives on hold (without pay!) listening to two corporate behemoths whine at each other. Dragging this out for an unreasonable amount of time will create real problems for real people.
Two: Judge Koh has more than just this case on her docket, and it isn't fair to everyone else in her district that Apple v. Samsung take up an unreasonable amount of time and prevent other cases to come to trial.
If you can't present your case with 25 hours of face time before the jury, well, you can go fuck off. The lawyers in this case don't get hired by trillion-dollar multinationals by being tame, they're going to bend any rule they can get away with. The judge needs to present a strong barrier to that.
(Oh, and bonus point: All three parties know that this is going to go to appeal anyway, unless a settlement is reached or something.)
Re:Sorry ... can't do it. (Was:Please ignore...) (Score:2, Insightful)
> You don't mod stories, you mod posts.
Right. So when someone says "mod story", it's a pretty good bet that they used it as short hand for "mod posts in the story".
> There is no reason to believe you are any more or less likely to be biased than anyone else, so there is no reason to prohibit modding posts, even when they are related to the story you submitted.
What he said was nothing about prohibiting modding. In fact if modding your own story was prohibited then he obviously would not have had to post anything.
> Also, you could have simply not modded. You aren't forced to mod. You did know that, right?
Pretty obviously he wanted to make that explicit and public. What's wrong with that?
You must be fun at parties.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
in favor of Apple.
Now I think her wild mood swings must mean she's medicating?
No, she has just gotten to know Apple better than she did before.
No, both sides have been enormous cunts for the entire trial, and she's pissed at both of them for that reason. It got bad enough that if Samsung loses, they're basically guaranteed a full appeal at this point. Probably the same with Apple. So we're almost certainly going to get to relive all this AGAIN! WEEE!
Re:When Did Judge Judy Become a Patent Lawyer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, Apple has 4 hours left to give any of their arguments. They gave her a list of 75! witness that she had to read and familiarize herself with overnight. Even apple themselves said they would only get 20 of the witnesses on the stand in 4 hours.
To recap.
4 hours
20 planned witnesses
75 objections to review.
That's straight up bullshit.
They are being unprofessional, she is simply taking them down a peg.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
No, both sides have been enormous cunts for the entire trial, and she's pissed at both of them for that reason. It got bad enough that if Samsung loses, they're basically guaranteed a full appeal at this point. Probably the same with Apple. So we're almost certainly going to get to relive all this AGAIN! WEEE!
This. Since almost the beginning, when Samsung's lawyers started lining up evidence for the judge to strike down, this trial was merely a pre-game for the appeal. In big trials like this, appeals are inevitable (unless the process is exhausting enough to make a settlement more appealing), so this move suggests Apple's lawyers are now finishing off with enough material to make the appeal trial that much more interesting.
Exactly Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
A judge isn't supposed to be hassling and berating the lawyers on both sides like this.
Good grief man, have you ever seen any real trials?
It is EXACTLY the job of a judge to ride herd over lawyers on both sides, as they will take whatever advantage they can eek out. You cannot have some mild judge that gets rode over by the alpha personality that almost every trial lawyer exhibits.
A judge must make, then strictly enforce, rules - or else the lawyers will just take over.
Re:Lack of judicial temperament (Score:3, Insightful)
And then, when a corporation can afford millions in lawyers and an injured consumer can afford next to nothing in comparison, nobody will be willing to sue. Because, if you lose, you'll owe the company that injured you millions on top of the initial injury. And the corporation, with the huge legal team, has a better chance of winning.
That only works when both sides, at the beginning of the suit, are of equal financial standing. Which is the rare case in our legal system. It sounds great on the face of it, but it's just a straw man that isn't worth the straw it's built out of.
Re:Lack of judicial temperament (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. Invalidating as many patents as possible is best for everyone. A settlement just means Apple can sue someone else for the same stuff.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
It really doesn't matter whether 50 cents worth of your shiny new Samsung toy goes to Apple, or vice versa.
I think you underestimate the seriousness of this issue to these companies. This isn't about tiny license fees. Apple is ultimately aiming for a complete sales ban on most (all?) Samsung smartphones (and then HTC). A few years ago Apple fans were proudly shouting that the iPhone had 70%+ of the smartphone market, and was growing by 200% to 300% every year. They don't talk about market share these days - now they brag about profitability - and the reason is that the iPhone market share is falling, and is down to 32%. The Samsung Galaxy phones are widely popular - UK sales data show the S2 and S3 outselling the iPhone every month except April 2012 - and if you check the "Android fragmentation" graph [businessinsider.com] you will see that Galaxy devices (GT-x) alone comprise a huge proportion of the Android market.
Apple executives are terrified that what happened with the desktop market - Apple initially gaining huge market share, and then falling to below 5% - will be repeated in the phone and tablet markets. And in a completely free market, that is what would probably happen, since competitors will produce lower price products with similar capabilities and over time erode market share of the dominant manufacturer. Thus the obvious answer is to try and avoid the dangers of the free market by asking the government to stop your competitors from being so competitive.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
But copyright only matters if you copy the actual bytes, while patents apply even if you implement it from scratch and have never seen the patented invention before. Its reach is much wider and protection against infringing them is much, much more difficult to achieve, since you can infringe without even knowing.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:2, Insightful)
WRONG!
Dood, seriously? GFC? what about superfunds funding future trading options? Apple has had a lot of money poured into it from different places left and right. How much of that was YOUR money! If Samsung loses and because they are not posted on the NASDAQ means that Samsung and their knitted group of shareholders bare the brunt. A company like Apple losses and loses large chunks of value then WE the people have to suffer. It's sick I tell ya!
This case SHOULD end in a Samsung win and yes I agree Samsung did steal. Samsung should win because they did what the market demands and that is be a competitor to a potential monopolistic vendor which in turn means we the users weigh in on the benefits, If it wasn't for Apple bringing out Smartphones and then Samsung making a BETTER Smartphone we wouldn't all have such cool devices sitting on all our desks.
This whole shooting match means
a) users get best of the best product as the two companies have to "out do" each other
b) It's a measure of true capitalism where business reaps the benefits because they have a better product.
I say allow the time proven way of business to play out, GM makes a better car than Ford, then Ford makes a better car than GM. What Apple did with the smartphone revolt is provide us with Electric Flying Cars, Samsung has given us Underwater Electric Flying Cars that can fly to outer space. So, lets keep the momentum of this going moving forward and not allow the courts to kill it.
START:
Apple_please_create_a_new_marketspace()
Samsung_copy_ Apple_but_make_it cheaper_and_better()
GOTO START
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:2, Insightful)
I was waiting for the "but but but Market Cap!" fools to chime in. Thanks for the LOL. Apple is a tiny company with a bunch of over-optimistic investors. Yes, you can argue and win on the premise that Apple designs cellphones for other people to make and still others to sell... While Samsung really does everything including making skyscrapers, kitchen sinks, and everything in between. Please enlighten me on how this makes them even comparable to the shiny doodad company from Cupertino.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
How about: Both Apple and Samsung get nothing since they can't come to an agreement. In other words: Neither Apple, nor Samsung can now use rounded rectangles, glass screens, or shiny black finish. Since you can't play nice or be fair, nobody wins.
Re:At first I thought the Judge was biased (Score:5, Insightful)
However, they do tend to post their reasoning and references behind their assertions... And that is a damn sight better than blind assertions or having to choose faith from authority. Sometimes the judges (being human which also means being biased, low-information, lazy, sick, impatient, etc at times) are indeed wrong or performing poorly. Once they put on the black robe they don't become perfect after all.
I've been impressed with the number of times I would normally have to do a [citation needed] but been pleasantly surprised at the fact that they took the time to dig up old exhibits, get other opinions from lawyers and specialists, list the relevant court documents directly from PACER or otherwise expand on the logic behind their reasoning. It's a very technical discussion of very complicated issues which is oddly and refreshingly accessible to even a lay-person who is not trained in lawyer-fu and doesn't speak legaleze. I would go so far as to assert that if politicians were required to reference all of their assertions at least as well as Groklaw references and explains theirs then politics would be a dead and unnecessary art after a couple of straight forward debates (barring incomprehensible idiots amongst the population who would cut off their nose to spite their face).
To use an example; I could assert that Romney frequently tends to come off as awkward and stiff under public pressure whereas Obama still tends to come off as collected and calm under the same. Some people would disagree with me because of a variety of reasons possibly including that they have political reasons not to like Obama or to speak in favor of Romney. However, a reader asserting bias in my observation is basically showing the bias of the reader themselves. My statements can be evaluated on their face and I could source plenty of incidents of this happening. So, is my assertion fundamentally an opinion at this point? Yes. An opinion which can be backed by examples? Yes. Biased? Not really. Partisan? No.
Groklaw explaining court proceedings works like that, and they do post their opinions and their relevant references inline in the same pieces. You also have access to the raw documents yourself and are free to draw your own conclusions because you have the same information available to you as they do. But you also have to think a little on how well you believe yourself to understand the matters at hand better than they do.
Completely partisan analysis as you assert implies they are hiding, misrepresenting, or otherwise masking information which I have seen no evidence to support. Care to provide examples? I haven't seen any incidence of them failing to back or retract potentially controversial assertions.
- Toast
No, it isn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
The share prices is the marginal trade price for small numbers of shares. Multiplying it by the number of shares is a bogus number. If all the shareholders in Apple tried to cash in on the same day - or even the same six months window - the price would collapse.
Market cap is a term invented by Wall Street to sell stock bubbles to dim punters.