“Apple said Thursday that its star witness in a patent trial against Qualcomm doesn’t intend to appear in court anymore, a striking twist in the long-running legal battle between the two tech giants,” Richard Nieva reports for CNET.
“The companies are fighting over three patents that Qualcomm says Apple infringed in the development of some versions of its iPhone. One of those patents allows a smartphone to quickly connect to the internet once the device is booted up,” Nieva reports. “Apple has argued that one of its then-engineers, Arjuna Siva, co-invented the technology and should be named on the patent as well.”
“Siva was scheduled to testify later in the trial, but Apple counsel Juanita Brooks said Thursday that won’t happen. She said Siva has retained new counsel that has informed him not to answer Apple’s questions,” Nieva reports. “He isn’t intending to appear, but if subpoenaed, he will testify, Brooks said… Brooks said Siva’s new counsel is a former partner at Quinn Emanuel, the law firm representing Qualcomm. She accused Qualcomm’s defense of witness tampering, and indicated Apple would not be subpoenaing Siva. ‘He’s a tainted witness,’ she said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Certainly smells fishy, doesn’t it?
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I and my legal team have had to go up against Quinn Emanuel several times since 1990. While I’ve always won, Quinn Emanuel has a good track record of consistently winning. They also has a reputation of bending the rules (with unsubstantiated rumors of them crossing the line in order to win).
But the question really is, “Why didn’t Apple’s legal team do adequate witness prep since this guy was going to be a WITNESS FOR APPLE?” Proper witness prep would have kept him far from Quinn Emanuel and Qualcomm. Proper witness prep would have had in very, very firmly in Apple’s camp.
Just one more in a long litany of examples as to how Apple’s legal team has repeatedly dropped the ball since the early 80s — all to Apple’s detriment.
In my forty years experience as a lawyer, I learned that you can prep witnesses until you are blue in the face, but you cannot control their behavior once they are on the stand. I suspect that Apple is very, very lucky that they had advance notice that this guy was waffling. If they had promised something to the jury that their own witness then directly contradicted, it would be much worse than just having to live without his testimony.
I suppose that a skilled lawyer can still get useful info. to support its case from the currently dropped witness if forced to testify.
Who was/is paying Arjunas legal fees ?