“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.
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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
