The second US trial between the top smartphone makers in the world has gotten of to a very tense start when US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California yesterday rejected Apple Inc's bid to show the jury how Samsung Electronics Co had been using three of the five patents that is currently being disputed in the case. Bloomberg said Koh's rejection followed after the South Korea mobile giant insisted that Apple is not using the intellectual property.
Lawyer John Quinn for Samsung told the jury in opening arguments on April 1 that Apple's lawsuit against them is actually an attack on Google Inc in disguise. Samsung is known user of the search engine company's Android operating system across all of its phones, Bloomberg said. Samsung claimed that Apple exaggerated on the extent of the damage it allegedly received from the supposed copying of its patent functions.
A court filing quoted Quinn, who told the jurors, "Apple admits that three of the five patent claims that it is suing on were not in that iPhone and have never been in any iPhone since. Apple doesn't consider it valuable enough to even use."
On the same day, Apple presented evidence and arguments mostly from its 2012 case in the hopes of convincing the jury that Samsung had infringed six of its patents, Bloomberg said. This time, however, Apple insisted that it is now 10 Samsung products, which include the Galaxy S3 phone, that has infringe five of its patents. Samsung, on its end, argued that nine of Apple's products, which include iPhone 5, iPad and iPod versions, had infringed two of its patents. According to another court filing, Samsung is seeking around $7 million in damages.
Lawyer Harold McElhinny told the jury in his April 1 opening argument that Samsung and not Google made the decision to illegally copy features to be able to sell over 37 million mobile phones and tablets.
Bloomberg said testimony is set to continue today with Samsung cross-examining Apple's senior vice president of product marketing Philip Schiller, who is a confidant of founder Steve Jobs.
