Law & Apple: Samsung's Legal Team Needs a Miracle
Law & Apple: Samsung's Legal Team Needs a Miracle
As we wrap up another week of iCourt between Apple and Samsung, this case is looking more and more like it is Cupertino's to lose. Jury trials can conclude in surprising ways, and certainly the entertainment and media worlds have no bearing on a courtroom decision, but when late night TV hosts are lampooning your legal team, you might want to be worried. Maybe a little.
Join us for another round of Law & Apple as we run through the latest head-scratchers from the District Court of the Northern District of California.
Apple vs. Samsung
The Samsung legal team seemed to pick up where we left off last week -- by blatantly ignoring courtroom rules and annoying judges. We've covered the accidental on purpose release of banned evidence directly to the media, as well as the sneaking in of trial witnesses to the courtroom when no on was looking. It seems, though, that the firm of Quinn Emmanuel can't get enough of detention hall.
Had enough?
Judge Koh issued very clear instructions before the trial that all lawyers in the case have to be properly cleared beforehand. In fact, Judge Koh even used her caps lock to yell at the legal teams to ensure they understood: "ALL TRIAL LAWYERS must make appearances in this case and must be admitted in this District."
Samsung, however, went ahead and brought in a lawyer who met neither of those requirments; who had not made any appearance before the court, and who was not yet admitted to practice practice before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Pretty, pretty slick, Samsung.
Of course, when they are not ignoring the rules, Samsung really drops the big hammers, like complaining about Apple using evidence labels that are too big. Apparently, Samsung is worried that by using standard evidence labels, and particularly the way Apple places them on the back of the devices, is "obscuring" the jury from differentiating the devices. Their fear, as Samsung states it, is that "by covering up large portions of the backs of the devices, by blotting out textures, shapes, colors and other information that consumers see" the jury will not be able to distinguish the unique Samsung-ness of the devices.
I have no idea what the phone on the left is.
And then at last, earlier today Samsung unleashed the core of it's legal strategy: the you-did-it-first argument. Apple has been blistering the court with evidence supporting their claim that Samsung has copied their products. The evidence has been damning and the media has even picked up the scent of blood in water, with late-night host Conan O'Brien even lampooning Samsung in a short video.
Samsung's response? They deny nothing so far. Instead, they yelled "Aha!" and rolled out Mitsubishi touch screen from 2003. The intent was to show that Apple clearly stole ideas from Mitsubishi, and therefore, it was OK that Samsung stole ideas from Apple.
That strategy, the one where you justify your bad behavior to your parents by pointing out that your older brother did it first, that one never worked out too well for us. Let's see in the next few weeks how well it works out for Samsung.
Adrian writes the weekly Law & Apple column and the occasional feature story for MacLife.com. Follow him on Twitter, or subscribe to him on Facebook.
Comment