There have been no shortage of days in court in the ongoing Samsung vs. Apple legal battle, which has raged since 2012. Something that is lacking? Unbiased jurors, apparently.
While a new round of courtroom drama kicked off this week, it apparently took a long time on day one to find jurors who were in a position to make a non-biased judgement. In all, multiple candidates were excused for various reasons of partiality. Here are some of them.
‘We had so many casualties’
More than a half a dozen potential jurors were excused on the basis that they owned Apple stock (which, if you haven’t noticed, is doing kind of amazingly these days.)
A further three were excused because they either worked for Apple or Samsung. One other was then excused because he works as an Android engineer. Another person had ties to both Apple and Samsung, prompting Judge Lucy Koh to quip, “Well, you might be fair then.”
Yet more jurors excused included a person in the computer industry who had followed the Samsung vs. Apple case “for years.” Another was excused because of a job that involved making wireless tracking devices in competition with Samsung.
“We’ve lost so many people,” an exasperated Judge Koh said at one point. “We had so many casualties this morning.”
Interestingly, CNET notes that some jury candidates took the opportunity to attack Apple. “I have a personal dislike for Apple,” said one woman. “I feel like they stole a lot of ideas from other people. And I’ve been personally burned by their products.” Another person said that Apple extorts “money from other companies,” while yet another didn’t like the way Apple kept money overseas.
At the end of the day, however, a jury was finally selected. Now we get to see whether this case actually leads anywhere….
