Remember all those weeks ago, there was this funny little argument between Apple and Samsung where they got into a tiny fight and then Apple was ordered by the U.K. High Court to post a statement of the court finding that Samsung did not copy its patents? After that was put out of the way most expected the heat to die down in the Apple v. Samsung rivalry.
Well just last week, Federal Judge Lucy Koh, decided to fan the flames of the Apple v. Samsung case. She will now “consider the questions” on whether the jury foreman in the previous Apple v. Samsung case “concealed information” during the jury selection process and if there was any misconduct during the process.
Judge Koh is looking into the matter during a hearing on December 6th. During her questioning, Koh has announced that she will require Apple to disclose all the information that the company’s lawyers knew about the jury foreman in question.
Koh’s order:
On October 30, 2012, Samsung filed a motion to compel Apple to disclose the circumstances and timing of Apple’s discovery of certain information regarding the jury foreperson. On November 2, 2012, Apple filed an opposition. At the December 6, 2012 hearing, the Court will consider the questions of whether the jury foreperson concealed information during voir dire, whether any concealed information was material, and whether any concealment constituted misconduct. An assessment of such issues is intertwined with the question of whether and when Apple had a duty to disclose the circumstances and timing of its discovery of information about the foreperson.
Samsung is trying with great difficulty to get the $1 billion patent judgment that a jury gave to Apple in an August throw out case. Apple had filed a suit against Samsung the previous year claiming that the company had copied some of the same technology and designs that were used for the iPad and the iPhone. Samsung then countered the suit, claiming that Apple violated some of its very own patents.
After the verdict in the Apple v. Samsung case in August, Samsung claimed that the company was not given a fair trial because of juror misconduct.
Samsung claimed and argued that the jury foreman on the Apple v. Samsung case, Velvin Hogan, did not disclose during the jury selection that he himself had been sued by Seagate, his former employer. (Can you say scandalous boys and girls?) Samsung then continued to point out in several court papers that Seagate and Samsung have a “substantial strategic relationship”. The case with Seagate then led Hogan to file for personal bankruptcy in 1993. Samsung stands by its claim that Hogan should have informed the court about the case.
In September, Brian Love a professor of law at Santa Clara University followed the trial closely and said that he thought it would be pretty difficult for Samsung to get the decision thrown out based on just jury misconduct. Love stated that, “You’re looking for material, or something else coming in that wasn’t introduced at trial, a juror reading reports about the case and they’re being influenced by outside forces.”
However, that wasn’t exactly the case with Hogan. In fact during voir dire, Hogan actually did disclose that he had been involved in litigation with a former partner when the judge had asked him if he had ever been involved in any litigation before.
In response to Samsung’s allegations, Hogan has stated that the judge did not ask for a complete listing of all the lawsuits he had been involved with. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think that this whole rivalry and Apple v. Samsung is just one twist after another. Here’s to hoping the lawsuits can be settled soon and we can all go back to being satisfied Apple product owners, or Samsung. Either way, we all get to text and surf the web and post statuses on Facebook and tweet and all of those other fun social networking things we love to do.
