There hasn’t been much news coming out of San Jose in the last few days, but that doesn’t mean that the Apple vs. Samsung case isn’t still bubbling away like a hot cauldron behind those large doors that stand so proudly in front of Judge Lucy Koh’s courtroom. Apple has already had their turn in the legal spotlight with their appointed counsel presenting the fundamentals of their case to the judge and overseeing jury, and now it’s time for Samsung’s legal eagles to step into the limelight, it seems that they are taking a rather bizarre approach to defending themselves.
As part of their case against Samsung, Apple has produced and presented multiple documents and information sets which they believe shows beyond doubt that Samsung “slavishly” copied the design of the iPhone and iPad in more than a few of their own products that run the Android operating system. You would image that Samsung would be eager to provide a whole heap of evidence to the contrary that convinces the jury otherwise, but it seems that the Korean giants are applying different tactics in this trial. The Samsung legal team are instead attempting to show that the patents that Apple are so vehemently defending were invalid to begin with and therefore cannot be infringed upon.
The Samsung rebuttal has already involved claims that certain Apple inclusions on their iPhones and iPads had been copied from older devices as well as calling on pre-recorded video evidence from Roger Fidler who works for the University of Missouri and claims to have been working on tablet designs since the early 1980s, some of which Apple employees had access to approximately fifteen years before the iPad was announced. The trial has also seen the involvement of Jin Soo Kim who is an Industrial Designer at Samsung who claims to have never been told by his bosses that at one point Google had told executives at his company that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was too similar to the iPad. Part of the designers’ testimony also indicated that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was in design stages way before the iPad was announced in 2010.
With less than ten hours of legal time left for each side, we should be seeing this case come to a close at some point next week, and I have to admit I think it would be fairly impossible to call this one off at the moment. The judge involved in the case has shown her disappointment with both sides known at various stages, and only recently indicated that a settlement between the parties would probably work out being the best solution. With more witnesses to come and a lot more cross examination from the Apple legal team, be prepared for more to come from this one.
(via AllThingsD)
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