Posted on 08/31/2012 3:18:24 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
'I expected to be dismissed': Even jury foreman on Apple case against Samsung admits he thought his own patents would make him ineligible
By Daniel Bates
PUBLISHED:03:38 GMT, 30 August 2012| UPDATED: 11:42 GMT, 30 August 2012
The controversial jury foreman in the Apple vs Samsung patent trial has admitted that even he thought he would be dismissed from the case.
Velvin Hogan said that because he had a tech patent in his name he thought it would rule him out during jury selection.
He also revealed that he had a second similar patent but said both were unrelated to the issues at hand and that he had a clear conscience over the decision to award $1bn damages to Apple.
Opening up about inner workings of the case, Mr Hogan disclosed that a female juror quit the day before it began because she could not handle the pressure.
The jury got through the four-week trial with endless cans of Red Bull, coffee and lots of joking around during the complex deliberations.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
P!
I understand the issue of patents. A lot of time, money, and research go into product design. Here, I am sympathetic with Apple in that regard.
On the other hand, if the stuff that is being patented are unavoidable designs that pretty much everybody has to use to make a product work, then it’s like one car company patenting the use of four tires or gasoline and then barring, or licensing at exorbitant prices, other company’s use of the same design.
A total sham verdict. And this jury foreman is supply enough ammo to make that happen.
I hope Samsung gets it tossed on appeal.
Allowing ordinary people to decide cases like this is as silly as allowing such people to decide medical malpractice cases.A South Korean jury would have come to exactly the opposite result.This case has reaffirmed my determination to never,never,*ever* buy an Apple product.
Our system allows the plaintiff to demand a trial by a jury of ordinary people, whether antitrust, medical malpractice, patent or anything else that is truly complex beyond an average person’s understanding. The job of the trial attorney is to get the law and facts distilled to an understandable level, and it appears both sides recognized someone with patent experience could impact the jury as he most likely would comment on his experience with patents in helping the jury work through the issues. Both sides took a gamble that it was better to have someone that the jury would rely on during their proceedings to answer questions they had on how the patent system worked based on his limited exposure or to have people essentially ignorant of the system lead each other based only on what they heard in the courtroom. I have no sympathy for Samsung in this case based on the verdict, and can appreciate they may have held out hope he would have swayed the jury in the opposite direction based on the extensive prosecution history in his particular issued patent teaching him something about the system for at least obtaining a patent over cited prior art.
Wow, I thought you only spill your bilge on Swordmaker’s Posts. Well glad to see you read other threads here, that means there may still hope for you.
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