Unredacted Documents In Apple/Samsung Case, No Evidence of 'Copy' Instruction 178
another random user writes "Previously redacted documents presented in the Apple-Samsung case seem not to offer actual evidence that Samsung told its designers to copy the iPhone. Documents that have now been unredacted seem to show that there was never any 'copy apple' instruction. There was a push towards things that would be different, such as what is now seen in the Galaxy S3: 'Our biggest asset is our screen. It is very important that we make screen size bigger, and in the future mobile phones will absorb even the function of e-books.' Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance."
Case Reset... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that there was some serious misconduct with respect to the Jury Forman and his "creative" opinions about prior art and patent law, this case will be appealed and start all over.
Re:Case Reset... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst I'm very much an Apple fanboy, I hate this kind of patent nonsense. The whole case seems to be a very odd affair especially since the companies are so closely tied. Reminds me of NetApp vs SUN and the whole COW patent issue with ZFS. Those two settled their differences to stop hurting their customers. Apple really doesn't need to do all this as they have the better (imho) product and let's face it if we got rid of patents like this we'd be all be much better off.
The irony... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance.
... except that the entire document was presented to the court and the jury. Apple made arguments presenting it in a light favorable to them, and I'm sure Samsung made counterarguments presenting it in a light favorable to them. That's how trials work. The jury gets to see the entire document, hear both interpretations, and figure out who they think is more credible.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Samsung marketing hard at work... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it just me or does it seem like Samsung is hard at work trying to sway public opinion with these stories of late? I mean seriously, where's are the Slashdot stories talking about the report that shows Samsung's labor violations in China [thedroidguy.com]?!?
Something is wrong with PJ (Score:2, Insightful)
IAAL.
I must confess I enjoyed reading Groklaw during the SCO-vs-linux days (well technically those aren't over, but you get what I mean). But the whole echo chamber of support seems to have gone to PJ's head and she's gone full-on anti-Apple, and in so doing betrayed her lack of knowledge in quite a few legal matters - for example, complaining about how some of Samsung's patents are "standards essential" while Apple's aren't, yet the licensing $ on offer to Samsung for those patents are significantly less than what Apple wants for its patents, exhibits a fundamental lack of understanding of how FRAND operates.
I guess it's true that eventually you live long enough to see all your heroes crumble, and reading Groklaw's extremely one-sided (and often inaccurate) coverage just makes me sad about the old days, when SCO was just this laughably bad adversary.
(It's like how WWII was the "golden age" for war movies because the Nazis were such simple, no-need-to-think-too-hard enemies you could gun down by the thousands without restraint... SCO provided that when it went after Linux with it's incredibly futile attack).
Groklaw is, I see now, no longer an unbiased cut-through-the-bullshit critique of what's going on on the legal side of tech. Groklaw has an agenda - understand this and you can read it safely.
Re:Bad summary (Score:4, Insightful)
LOL - you think the jury looked at *any* of the documents? They already had their biased leader who knew all about patents and such to interpret - why read? The jury didn't understand squat in this case - they just decided they liked Apple better and went with it. Wonder how they found 12 people without cell phones to be on a jury so as not to be influenced by what they had - or how the patent master was left as foreman. I can't understand how either side saw him as a plus.
Groklaw has jumped the Samsung (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, right "unredacted" documents suddenly show they say the exact opposite of before - but why Samsung didn't show them in court remains a "mystery", it were originally theirs (just like the prior art they couldn't hand over in time - a looong time). Somehow nobody noticed that Apple had the "un" blacked in "We must make something more unlike the iPhone"
Are you fucking kidding me?
But hey, PJ proves it - by selectively only quoting what fits her agenda. And what has actually been in the "redacted" documents all along.
Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
"Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance."
Lawyers presenting evidence in a way that is beneficial to their clients? Outrageous!
Wait...Isn't that their job? And isn't the job of the other party's lawyer to do the same and, if possible, poke holes in their opponents line of argument?
Re:That's how it is supposed to work (Score:3, Insightful)
A car that is in good working order is still going to crash if it has a bad driver.
Similiarly, if you get a jury foreman who lies through his teeth just to get a chance to get even with the defendant, you are going to have problems.
There are decisions that can only be made by people, and people are also good at manipulating things. That is why no system will ever be perfect as long as people are involved.
Re:Samsung marketing hard at work... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean seriously, where's are the Slashdot stories talking about the report that shows Samsung's labor violations in China [thedroidguy.com]?!?
The problem is that virtually all consumer technology has this issue, and since we would like to keep our toys, we conveniently ignore abuses like these. There's really no pleasent way around it.
Re:The irony... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The irony... (Score:4, Insightful)
you are lying to yourself if you think the existing players werent creating an 'iOS experience' before apple came along.
Groklaw isn't thinking straight (Score:2, Insightful)
The primary thing this tells us is that Groklaw is so biased on this matter that they aren't thinking straight. Let's apply just a bit of common sense:
These are Samsung documents. Apple obviously does not have the power to hide the contents of Samsung's own documents. As is commonly the case, some court documents were redacted for the public to protect the proprietary interests of the companies involved (Samsung, in this case). That does not mean that the jury did not get to see them. It appears that Samsung now thinks it is in its interest to make the documents public.
Groklaw is trying to get us to believe that the jury's decision that Samsung intentionally copied Apple was based entirely on an out-of-context quite from this document. There's something a bit fishy there. If Apple quoted something from Samsung's documents out of context, wouldn't Samsung's lawyers have been at pains to quote the correct context? You'd think so, wouldn't you? Unless, of course, this document was not actually as pivotal as Groklaw (and presumably Samsung) now would like us to believe. Could it be that the jury did not base its judgment solely--or even primarily--on this document? Could it be that the jury saw much more compelling evidence that Samsung's copying was intentional?
Say for instance a detailed Samsung report comparing Samsung's product to Apple's feature by feature and recommending that Samsung emulate Apple's design choices? [scribd.com]
Or perhaps emails showing that Google warned Samsung that its products were infringing upon Apple's designs? [bloomberg.com]
This is kind of sad. Groklaw did some nice reporting on the SCO lawsuit. But when it comes to Apple and Samsung, they seem to have gone off the rails.