Upon Further Review... Judge Realizes The Jury In Apple/Samsung Case Screwed Up
from the and-so-this-continues dept
After Judge Lucy Koh's ruling at the end of January, it appeared that she was not going to delve into the jury's efforts, despite many concerns that the jury clearly did not read and did not understand the jury instructions. However, on Friday, Koh came back and explicitly called out the jury for not following the rules, and cut the initial award by 45% (or about $450 million).The key issue: the jury instructions were explicit that the jury not award Apple based on Samsung's profits for any utility patent infringements. But, in looking through the awards, it became clear that this was exactly what the jury did. Note that all of this came about in response to Apple's attempt to increase the award above $1 billion -- and, as a result, the reward has now been massively reduced.
Apple’s motion for an increase in the jury’s damages award is DENIED. The Court declines to determine the amount of prejudgment interest or supplemental damages until after the appeals in this case are resolved.And yes, the judge clearly called out the jury:
Because the Court has identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award, and cannot reasonably calculate the amount of excess while effectuating the intent of the jury, the Court hereby ORDERS a new trial on damages for the following products: Galaxy Prevail, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy SII AT&T, Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Tab, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, and Transform. This amounts to $450,514,650 being stricken from the jury’s award. The parties are encouraged to seek appellate review of this Order before any new trial.
... it is apparent that the jury failed to follow the Court’s instructions on the law, and awarded damages based on a legally impermissible theory. This award cannot stand.Either way, this is far, far, far from over. There needs to be a new trial just on damages and there are the various appeals. Stay tuned, because unless the two companies settle (and they've shown little inclination on that front), we've still got a few more years of this mess.
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Filed Under: awards, jury, lucy koh, patents, profits
Companies: apple, samsung
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Really needs fixed by means-testing plaintiff.
Take a loopy tour of Techdirt.com! You always end up at same place!
http://techdirt.com/
Mike claims to have a college degree in economics, can't ya tell?
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Re: Really needs fixed by means-testing plaintiff.
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*pouts* And No a cookie will not cut it this time.
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I demand A shrubbery! Oh and his head on a pike if it's not too much to ask.. pretty please with jam?
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Or some people find it satisfying to punch the bag..
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If you're offered fish in a barrel, why not shoot it?
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Re: Really needs fixed by means-testing plaintiff.
Sometimes it is enough to put up a sign identifying the sink hole, and not try to eliminate it, lest the bulldozer is also trapped in its grips.
God knows enough people have tried to educate you, but you remain resistant. So without a good answer on how to solve the problem, everyone just needs to understand OOTB is a troll.
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Re: Re: Really needs fixed by means-testing plaintiff.
Once would be nice. CwF+RtB is not a panacea.
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Re: Re: Re: Really needs fixed by means-testing plaintiff.
Additionally, CwF+RtB has never been offered as a panacea, but thanks for playing.
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Re: Really needs fixed by means-testing plaintiff.
Even if some of them are actually legitimate??
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Of course one is left to wonder how this benefited consumers in any way... and how many other cool things won't come to the light of day while they invest more cash in a dick measuring content.
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And if the customer was to understand this, then capitalism would go the way of Communism! And then we would be left with....Socialism. And that, my friend, is un-American! AND WE CANNOT HAVE THAT!
So, let them fight on the Internet, and in the courtrooms and in the media. For someone else will stand tall and push to power...
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Patents my ass..
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Careful ... someone might...
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Get the pressure washer out. Take aim, and turn it up to 11!
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Yes, I'm sure they are all morons. And if they made more money their decisions would most definitely be better - in some way or another, it's not real clear how or why ....
Is this the case where the jury foreman with a conflict of interest told the jury members that he was a patent expert and that they did not have to follow the jury instructions telling them to review each and every item? Or was that a different case.
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Mentally at least, to most people the difference between say 100 million, and 110 million isn't going to be that large, as both are just thought of as very large numbers to the mind, without a real grasp of how much of a difference there is between the two monetarily.
You get the same problem in reverse with the music/movie lawsuits, where those buying the laws and sending out the attack lawyers see nothing unreasonable about asking for thousand or tens of thousand of dollars in 'damages' for a single song/movie download, because to people like that a couple of thousand wouldn't be a big deal, and they just flat out cannot comprehend how insanely large such 'trivial' amounts would be to most people.
And yes, this is indeed the same case with the jury foreman ignoring, and leading the other jurors to ignore, the instructions the judge handed out.
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Given that most of the 1% are doctors, lawyers, and bankers, I think we can safely assume IQ correlates to income.
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Most rich people are actually very good at seeing opportunities they are not necessarily genius or very bright otherwise and most of them would not be able to find solutions to problems if conditions changed.
Also given a problem to a group of people, most of the time that group will find the right solution, higher income or not.
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The best citation I can come up with to counter your claim, all you have to do is look at the entirety of the US Presidency and Congress to know that sticking a bunch of low IQ people in a room does not collectively increase the general intelligence quotation of a group. A friend of mine from my undergrad had a rather humorous thesis concerning that.
The result was that the general average IQ of a human goes down when you mix a bunch of people together with the same IQ. A lot of my friend's test subjects started arguing on who should lead to solve a simple problem like who should do what to keep a weight triggered door open to retrieve a prize....chimps fared better at teamwork than they did.
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Explain Chris Dodd to me...
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http://www.amnh.org/learn/pd/physical_science/profiles/aeinstein.html
"Legend has it that Einstein was a poor student who flunked out of school, but this was not the case. He excelled at math and science, though he often got only mediocre grades in other classes. "
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There are several theories as to how this rumor started.
It should be noted that Albert Einstein likely had Asperger's Syndrome. I can assure from my own personal experience I am terrible at following basic directions and when it comes to learning, lectures only unlearn what I have learned. Theoretically, most people with Asperger's Syndrome are quite eccentric. It turns out that his genuine genius shined at the age of 12 where he came up with his own proofs and his own way on how to solve the Pythagorean Theorem. His ways may have been seen unconventional at the time.
Another one is that he seemingly got a bad grade when one schools he had attended reversed the grading scale from 1 lowest and 6 highest, to 1 highest and 6 lowest.
Yet another theory stated that people thought he was bad in mathematics due to the fact that he always sought the second opinion of other mathematicians to check his work (which is completely bull to think that of someone smart enough to get a second opinion).
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Not true. There may be some correlation, but it's not strong and there is a lot of debate about it. In fact, an argument can be made that higher IQ is, in some cases, correlated with a lower income: http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/07/higher_intellig.html
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Even a quick check of Wikipedia shows that IQ is correlated to income between 0.4-0.5 (i.e., 40%-50% of the variability in income is explained by IQ). That is a lot, in my book.
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No, mostly it's where you where born and who raised you. Your ability to improve your income levels within your own lifetime or past that of your parents' might involve some measure of intelligence, but not necessarily. A four year degree makes a big difference, but that doesn't equate with intelligence, just an ability to get a college loan and stick it out until you graduate.
What you're really looking at is 'economic mobility'. If you are born at the top or the bottom, you are likely to stay there. If you are born at the bottom, but your income improves, it's unlikely that you would exceed the middle area. Hard work, intelligence, cunning, whatever, have very little to do with it. It's a big part of why people who have money just can't comprehend why poor people don't just change things so they have money too. They must be stupid or lazy, right?
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The greatest example of all with dumb people with lots of money....one only as to look at the US Government outside of NASA. On that note, NASA gets lots of budget cuts each year which is why they selected a private company to launch supplies to the ISS.
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Looked at from a different perspective -- what do wealthy people have in common -- it's not intelligence, it's personality traits and family background. If we're looking for strong correlations, we can pretty much stop with those two -- although that would also be dramatically oversimplifying things.
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Yeah, this is that case. Where the man claimed to be an expert on patents, because he has one single patent on a completely unrelated technology, and then proceeded to steer the rest of the jury to a decision that he wanted in the vein of "if Samsung ripped me off, they need to pay". Which essentially flew in the face of the instructions given to the jury. Which is ignoring the fact that his reasoning was iOS wouldn't work on a Samsung device ipso facto they ripped off the iPhone. Or something to that moronic logic.
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Attorneys try to weed out those that they perceive will have a bias against their case, that is certainly true. They also will try to weed out self proclaimed 'experts' who may not have an open mind to their evidence. If they have a weak case they may look for people that can be influenced by emotion.
I don't think they lean toward the 'stupid' just the people that may be more inclined (for whatever reason) to buy into their case.
I recently was called to jury duty and the case was a male substitute teacher (early 20s) who had a consensual relationship with a female student (17). I was the last person in the jury pool and had an opportunity to watch (for the fifth time in my life) the jury selection process. The choices were interesting to say the least. They past over some 'stupid' people and ended up with, among others, a School System Administrator and a successful business woman on the jury.
I have served on one jury, and there were a couple of duds on it, but most of the people were intelligent, some were quite emotional, and all took the job seriously and were attentive during the trial.
Unfortunately, the problem I see with a lot of jurors is when in deliberations they just want to go home and because of that are willing to change their positions too easily. Especially if they feel like they are inferior to other jurors or you have some rather intimidating jurors.
So it is not education level, or even income that matters. juries are made up of people who each side believes is either open to their arguments or wan be swayed by what they will present as evidence.
I guess the other side of that is "Jury of Your Peers" so depending on where you live, you will have a different set of 'peers'.
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/s
Who is the moron? That designation more fitting lies with the attorney that requested a jury trial rather than a bench trial. After all bench trials don't allow the same level of playing on the sympathy of people. Judges use logic and facts (generally) to reach a verdict.
Perhaps the designation of "moron" more fitting lies with the CEO of a company who would rather spend money litigating over its products looks being emulated than innovating to beat back the competition.
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What Can I say?
http://allthingsd.com/20130222/samsungs-ill-conceived-apple-voiceover-suit-stayed-in-germany/
Apple had issues with rounded corners altogether though.
My point is that I am actually glad the ruling got lowered a bit, and Mike Mansick you are roughly a week late on that bit of news, and I do agree that it mostly the jury's fault in the initial ruling.
$549,485,350 is a more acceptable ruling.
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Re: What Can I say?
That bit about Samsung's text to speech software is completely irrelevant to this current situation and has no relevancy to the errors on the part of the jury. Seems like a poor jab on your part in my opinion.
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to quote my self here:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130301/18133122175/upon-further-review-judge-realizes-jury -applesamsung-case-screwed-up.shtml#c499
"My point is that I am actually glad the ruling got lowered a bit, and Mike Mansick you are roughly a week late on that bit of news, and I do agree that it mostly the jury's fault in the initial ruling."
It was a jury decsision and at both sides of the fence, the rulings are being reversed left and right.
I meant no jab at Samsung as I am equally annoyed at both...my next device is going to be either a Blacberry 10 or one of the latest HTC models.
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The other troubling thing I find is that the jury in the case failed to follow all the basic jury jurisdictional prudence allowed/limited to them by law and the specific directions given to them from the judge were ignored....Which is likely why Apple hasn't said anything in protest about this recent denial.
Before anyone jumps down my throat about that, keep in mind Samsung only accused the jury of bias and never questioned the amount in general. They just went after one of the jury members citing bias against them, and subsequently accused Apple of wrongdoing event though that jury member had nothing to do with any patents pertaining to Apple or the case in general.
Both sides of this case were at fault here, and the Jury itself failed to follow basic court procedures and orders from the court.
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Indeed. The more interesting question is what happens now that two of the major patents, for which Samsung was found to be infringing, have since been invalidated by the Patent Office.
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To answer your question, the patent's involved that were not struck down in the deal may have been legitimate....that is just a speculation of mine and only just barely legitimate at that...The issue was the monetary reward not matching the value of the patents.
Neither party in these types of civil suits are allowed to advise the jury on the appraised value of the patents themselves. Apple asked for about $1-billion in damages and that is the only thing being questioned at this time because the jury could have and should have awarded a much less substantial damages claim.
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Like any decision rendered by the USPTO, it can, and certainly will, be appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. IOW, the reexamination decisions are far from, and a final, binding decision will likely issue well in the future.
In this case the decision as to validity has already been made and is binding on the parties. Accordingly, the case will proceed to retrial on the issue of damages associated with the products identified by the court as having errors in the jury's original calculation of damages. Of course, the new trial will involve a new jury.
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