“Late on Sunday, Judge Lucy Koh, the federal judge presiding over the Apple v. Samsung trial in San Jose, surprisingly overruled Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal and entered an order that is a major breakthrough for Samsung,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “This reversal significantly increases the Korean company’s chances of getting a verdict it can live with.”
“Instead of providing an adverse inference instruction only against Samsung, the court will tell the jury the same thing about both companies,” Mueller reports. “As a result, the jury will not consider Samsung less trustworthy than Apple, which would have been the case if Judge Grewal’s decisions to give such an instruction only against Samsung but not against Apple had been upheld.”
Mueller writes, “It appears that Judge Koh was too concerned about appearing to apply double standards to the two parties. However, I continue to believe that the facts in Samsung’s case — given that the Korean company already faced problems in U.S. litigation due to its automatic deletion of emails seven years ago — were far more serious than the ones in Apple’s case. Judge Koh certainly missed an opportunity to show strength and treat companies differently if the facts warrant it, even if the parties’ conduct may appear comparable at the highest level of abstraction. If the outcome of the trial is unfavorable to Apple, Apple may very well prevail on this question on appeal and get a retrial with a different instruction.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Judge Lucy Koh asks Apple’s attorneys if they’re ‘smoking crack’ – August 16, 2012
Judge urges Apple and Samsung to settle ahead of verdict – August 15, 2012
Apple’s biggest enemy in smartphone wars: Molasses-like legal systems – June 13, 2012
What a suprise. More like a JOKE. What is the point of any judicial system that lacks ethics?
“It appears that Judge Koh was too concerned about appearing to apply double standards…”
No, it *appears* as though judge Koh IS Korean…
I hate to say this… But Koh is Korean…
She prolly had family back there…
Ya I can tell you REALLY hate to say it. I bet it’s been several hours since your last racial slur. Asshole.
right. Because staring the obvious is racist. I’m not saying the dude is right but just because he’s wrong doesn’t make his assumption racist.
Yeah it does.
Im Asian and I’m pretty sure the judge was sympathetic.
Koh and the US legal system is a joke.
Sad but True
it’s ridiculous that a Korean judge was even allowed to settle this- talk about non-partial.
So it had to be a white american Judge?
His comment here is relevant. If she has family back in Korea, they could be threatened by the powers that be.
No, it’s assholes that play the race card every chance they get that makes the issue of race into an eye-rolling trivial topic, stealing legitimacy from genuine occurrences of discrimination.
something racial isn’t necessarily racist. Point out how it is racist.
Goodbye Lordthree and don’t come back.
fuck off troll. I just stated a FACT
Actually, you didn’t state a fact. Koh was born in the United States and attended Harvard, so she is an American, not Korean, though perhaps her parents are from Korean… but that’s an assumption, not a fact. Similarly, your “… prolly has family back there” statement is also an assumption. You’re implying that her loyalties are Korean, rather than American, yet show no evidence of such.
So, sorry, you did NOT state a FACT.
“Korean” is an ethnicity, as well as a nationality.
I have no wager in this fight (in fact I don’t even know what she looks like, for all I know she’s a Martian), just pointing out your obvious error.
Of course you’re correct, however, I was hoping that Lordthree was making an assertion of national loyalty rather than one of ethnicity. Guess I was wrong.
indeed
I hate to say this but… you come off like an idiot for saying that. She’s an American dummy.
I’m not sure how offensive it is to call her Korean, but I’m pretty sure she would not appreciate being called an American dummy.
Roflmao
Isn’t this like HR running a background check on someone, finding out they lied about prior employment, but not mentioning it to your hiring manager — putting all applicants on equal footing.
Her name should be Lucy “utt ohh”.
Message to corporate litigants across the country: Don’t hesitate to delete your evidence.
You just nailed it. This decision is a disaster.
I think Lucy Koh is trying to force Apple to settle before it goes to the jury. She asked Apple and Samsung to discuss a settlement one more time and that is happening today.
That’s not unusual for civil cases, especially complex cases like this one. Remember, the parties can agree to any terms they like when settling, but the judge and jury can only award money and possibly an injunction. The judge can’t force a licensing agreement, for example, on the parties.
Usually settlements work best for all parties involved because you can put things in which you can’t really address at trial, e.g., Apple could get Samsung to give it 1,000,000 display units and agree not to sell Android tablets in Australia. A judge can’t impose those type of agreements.
It’s sad that I have to wade through a bunch of racist comments or political ideologies to get to a kernel of intelligent thought. Thanks, Bizlaw!
I hate to agree, but I’m pretty sure there would be familial pressure whether her family was in Korea or the U.S.
That’s how asian family structures are with nationality and culture.
Hey Lucy, here is how you would put the question on equal footing with simple semantics that still preserve the meaning:
“Which company would you see as more trustworthy – the company that deletes its evidence every 2 weeks or the company that archives all its evidence?
“That’s how asian family structures are with nationality and culture.”
Opinions like that are what got Japanese Americans placed into internment camps durin ww2
bingo….point and game
The West Coast Japs were interned because of code breaking exposing that many, many Jap agents were mixed in the Jap-American population. Only during the past decade have the records of this been declassified.
Dan Kurt
Phew…I guess that justifies it right!
No what the motives, there is just some really bad judging going on in this case. Yeah – a settlement would be neat. It ain’t going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen. I think Judge Koh is doing everything she can to make sure this trial gets appealed and that she makes enough mistakes to make the Appeals court have to render the actual judgment. With all of the fu¢kups that have occurred already, this case is destined for determination outside of this courtroom. No matter what the jury decides, it will be irrelevant. The Appeals court will either if the judgment (unlikely) or find there were too many errors and remand for a new trial – not in front of Judge Koh. The way she is acting she should have recused herself when initially assigned the case.
Maybe she just smoked some crack
Its so god damn obvious that Samsung copied apple.
This shouldn’t be a legal decision anyway.
Simple test – take one of each device out on the street and show the general public. Ask them which one is the ipad.
If apple lose this then there is NO justice.
Thy might as well get rid of patents because if the jury decide that Samsung win then there might as well be no patents.
One thing is for sure, if apple lose this you can guarantee that apple will increase security in the company tenfold plus will make sure technically that is virtually impossible to copy their designs again by making the designs so hard to engineer that the competition won’t be able to afford to copy them.
Steve jobs would be goog ape shot over this fiasco.
Apple will not lose this as it would nullify the protection of any patent. The only question is by how much will Samsung lose? I think Koh is just trying to lessen the pain a little bit. Also it gives Apple a perfect chance to appeal if they are unhappy that it is not enough. I think Apple is less interested in any rewards rather than obtaining their ultimate achievement….To fire a warning shot across the bow of other companies…Beware of pissing us off or this will happen to you.
Also can you guys tone down the ethnic rhetoric? She may be sympathetic, she may not.
Do you know her personally? No…so your words are speculative and carry no weight.
Now you see the logical upshot of Koh’s begging the parties to settle numerous times before putting the verdict in a jury’s hands. She’s been desperate not to have her name associated with a landmark decision in favor of Apple. The way this trial was playing out before her insane decision to treat the parties’ adverse inference claims equally would have assured that.
she works maybe one month out of a year. Fail.
Judge Koh certainly missed an opportunity to show strength and treat companies differently if the facts warrant it
…Which I attribute to here TechTardiness. Let’s hope that IGNORANCE does not win over FACTS. But at this point I see no hope for Samsung. Caught red-handed. Gonna pay for their crimes. Nothing gonna stop it. Looking forward to it…
The patent laws need to be changed. It is a good thing that Apple didn’t have Mercedes’ invention of automobile or there would be not other and nothing with 4 wheels and a motor would be allowed without a bit out of a fruit on the side. Apple copied palm pilot as well as LG and Samsung copied apple. The main thing is they improved on what they saw. Apple is coming out with a large screen. Should Apple pay Samsung for it? After all, Samsung has over 4″ screens on smartphones as well as nearly all other Android phones. APple is not happy unless they are a monopoly. APple is very fortunate this trial is taking place in THEIR backyard, as Europe and Asia will not be as kind to APple, and APple better watch out or Google’s lawsuit through Motorola might be BIG payback time.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen an inarticulate, summary generalization of Apple’s attempts to defend its intellectual property, I’d be a millionaire.
Please go back to trolling the backwaters of Engadget or Gizmodo. You’ll be much more at home in the comment sections there.