“Samsung’s lead counsel, Quinn Emanuel’s star patent litigator Charles Verhoeven, is currently in Washington DC to represent Motorola at an ITC hearing against Apple. That hearing began yesterday (with a pre-hearing conference, so it really just starts today) and will last until December 16. By the time he returns and possibly meets with Apple’s lead counsel, it will be too late for Apple to have its motion heard before the end of the year,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “What riles Apple is that he doesn’t waive the requirement for an in-person M&C (Apple believes the court would allow a conference call instead) or authorize one of his deputies to discuss this with Apple’s lawyers.”
“The California case is on a tight schedule. Apple succeeded (not entirely, but largely) with a request for an expedited trial. The trial is scheduled to begin on July 30, 2012, but it remains to be seen whether the case will be trial-ready by then,” Mueller reports. “Delays can always happen. Samsung would apparently like to slow things down to whatever extent the court ultimately allows.”
Mueller reports, “There are two timing issues here. The primary issue is that Samsung is, according to Apple, uncooperative with respect to the production of evidence. The secondary one is that the unavailability and inflexibility of Samsung’s lead counsel now prevent Apple from tackling the primary issue through a motion to compel.”
Read more in the full article here.