In the continuing saga of Apple and Samsung in the copyright infringement trial in California recently, it seems as if Apple has a much stronger position than many people might believe. This isn’t a case of Apple stifling innovation, but rather of Samsung knowing very well that it has a weak case in both the claims it is defending against as well as the claims it has brought to court itself.
According to FOSSPatents, Apple is asserting only three types of intellectual property rights, while Samsung is dealing with six patents of a technical nature. Samsung favors jury instructions that are defendant-friendly, of course, in the design patent and trade claims it is a named defendant in. However, since Samsung is asserting so many more technical and utility patents, it seems odd to favor these kinds of jury instructions – the behavior may show that Samsung knows it has a weaker case. This fits in very well, however, with the 700 juror questions it filed last week.
Heck, Samsung even as much as told the court that any of its public statements, which amount to “everything’s allright, stay calm” sort of content, are more of a way to reassure the public than any kind of truth of the matter.
In the proposed jury instructions, Samsung’s tend to be very wordy and insist on ambiguous legal terminology, like “alleged.” Apple’s instructions tend to be more direct, at least in terms of legal writing, and seem to be more to the point. On the other hand, Apple isn’t beyond trying to build a reality to it’s own favor with it’s instructions and proposals, which contain more talk about Apple’s counterclaims than Samsung’s infringement claims. Of course, that’s what we’d expect from a legal perspective.
It will be interesting to see US District Court’s Judge Lucy Koh’s response to these new proposals. Hopefully, she’ll winnow down the obfuscating and defensive language from the Samsung instructions, and balance out Apple’s lack of attention to specific Samsung claims. We’ll then ideally see a much more fair and balanced set of jury instructions, along with a court case that is about finding the truth than hiding it.
Source: FOSSPatents
