“A court error on Friday offered a brief glimpse at information that Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics have tried to shield from the public during their high-stakes patent litigation,” Dan Levine and Carlyn Kolker report for Reuters.
“The material appears to be less important for what it says about the companies than what it reveals about efforts to keep court proceedings secret,” Levine and Kolker report. “In denying Apple’s bid to stop Samsung from selling its Galaxy smartphone and tablets in the United States, District Judge Lucy Koh’s ruling inadvertently included details she had intended to black out. The judge’s staff quickly realized the error, sealed the electronic document and posted a redacted version four hours later.”
Levine and Kolker report, “The fuller version, which Reuters obtained while it was publicly available… contained internal company analysis about the smartphone market, as well as some details about Apple’s patent licensing relationships with other tech companies… According to the redacted portions, Apple’s own studies show that existing customers are unlikely to switch from iPhones to Samsung devices. Instead, the evidence suggests an increase in sales of Samsung smartphones is likely to come at the expense of other smartphones with Android operating systems, Koh wrote… The redacted portions also refer to licensing deals that Apple struck with other high-tech companies over one of its key patents.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Apple licensed iOS scrolling patent to Nokia and IBM, offered license to Samsung – December 4, 2011
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The judge needs to be Koh-rected.
And has to be Koh-redacted.
Right an error to expose confidential details from Apple. Nice job Judge & Staff friendly to foreign companies that copy hard working American based companies like Apple. Really…. unprofessional. We can see where this is going with the court system. Too bad for Apple.
How come it is OK for Reuters to reveal secrets, but not Wikileaks?
“(…) existing customers are unlikely to switch from iPhones to Samsung devices.”
That’s only common sense. I don’t see why Apple would want to keep that information secret.
I never read anything like what you stated above.
“Apple doesn’t license much, and it could be that they don’t want people to know who the licensees are,” said Holbrook, the IP professor.
And it was BOTH Samsung and Apple who wished the Judge to redact information to the general public.
Samsung – the huge components supplier – could not keep up to the demands – specially when making their own copy cat devices.
🙂