“Apple’s expert witness on damages, a certified public accountant from Chicago, was the person who sealed the iPhone maker’s victory in its patent infringement retrial against rival Samsung, according to members of the eight-person jury,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“Jury forewoman Colleen Allen spoke with Bloomberg after the trial concluded on Thursday, and revealed that it was CPA Julie L. Davis who provided the strongest evidence to justify a $290 million payout to Apple from Samsung,” Hughes reports. “Allen called Davis a ‘superstar witness,’ saying she was ‘on it’ and steady when cross examined.”
Hughes reports, “Allen’s thoughts were echoed by fellow juror Barry Goldman-Hall, who said that it was Davis who helped determine exactly how much money Apple should be awarded.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Allen, the forewoman, said jurors ‘butted heads’ on $178 million that Samsung argued should be subtracted from profits of more than $230 million that the companies agreed was attributable to the infringing products,” Joel Rosenblatt reports for Bloomberg. “Davis argued ‘absolutely none of it should come out,’ Allen said, referring to the $178 million, and Samsung didn’t provide sufficient evidence to rebut Apple’s expert, to make its case that the entire amount should be deducted for its operating costs. Jurors agreed to take the ‘middle of the road’ and cut half of that amount, Allen said.”
“Barry Goldman-Hall concurred that Davis’s testimony was key when asked about decisive evidence presented at trial,” Rosenblatt reports. “‘For most of us it was Julie Davis,’ he said in an interview. ‘She offered us a lot of information’ to determine how much of the $178 million and what royalties should be awarded to Apple, he said. Samsung attempted, and failed, to block Goldman-Hall from being seated on the panel after he disclosed during jury selection that his cousin’s employment with Samsung ended ‘under bad circumstances.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Intellect is becoming fashionable again.
Why split the disputed amount? Either Samsung stole IP and made money or they didn’t. It should have been the whole amount or nothing. Clueless jury.
I am absolutely outraged at this whole process. Samsung got away with billions of dollars of grand theft and is paying less than pennies on the dollar.
lol….just think they only wanted to pay I think the number was 52 million after they admitted they copied.
Relax, this isn’t over. Pending any appeal, Samsung’s products should be pulled from store shelves before the holiday season. Perhaps not this year but next, when they’ll really need the money, after losing even more of Apple’s business.
It’s not about the money. It’s about the precedent.
Because it was disputed, there was an argument about how much if any was related to the Apple IP. I’m no fan of Samsun by any means, and hope Apple drive them into the ground, but even I recognise that it’s not as binary as that.
So, the thinking is that the jurors were trying to calculate Samsung’s stolen profits, by backing out things like Samsung’s “operating costs”, but is that the way they should have done it?
Wouldn’t it have been better to calculate Apple’s lost profits? I mean, the profit on one Samsung smartphone is smaller than the profit on one iPhone. By using Samsung’s profits as the basis, then you get a smaller result.
Agreed! What if Samsung wanted to simply hurt Apple by offering copies of the iPhone at cost (i. e., 0 profit) and thereby stealing millions of sales from Apple. Would they have no penalty to pay for copying?
Exactly, Samsung owes Apple tens of billions of dollars at the very low end.
Agree 110% but this was a win for those infringing products ….. Next March Apple will have SamDungie and their crappy products back again in court …..
Coupled with the ITC and EU Sammie and Giggles have some high hills to climb …..
And don’t count RockStar and Mr. Softy out, they are attacking on other fronts ……
Giggles and Crew have their hands full …..
Oh, did I mention the possible sanctions against SamDungie and their scumbag lawyers?
Juries can only decide issues based on rules set by the court. The method by which the award amount was calculated was set by the court, doubtless as part of the many pretrial agreements between the litigants. I’m sure the jury had to make a decision within a set of constraints that were predefined for them.
Sometimes when you call in a pinch hitter, they hit a home run or in this case, a nice triple!
smart lady. lets all chip in and buy her some iPod shuffle socks
Where is the conflict of interest, broken NDAs and corporate espionage piece to this since Samsung is the biggest component supplier to Apple?
Samsung will see to it every jury person with any credentials is weeded out next time, when in fact cases like these should have a panel of people with a modicum of knowledge over the subject matter.
Virgin juries don’t exist; ignorance is not helpful, especially those who become obstinate for fear of admitting they can’t understand what’s at stake.