Patent Infringement | "Jury Selected For Apple-Samsung Patent Trial"

By : Eric Linton 
Source : http://www.ibtimes.com 
Catgory : Patent Infringement 

The first day of the patent infringement trial between Apple and Samsung wrapped up in San Jose, Calif., with a jury in hand Monday.

The pool of prospective jurors was narrowed down to seven men and two women who will hear testimony and decide the case, CNET reported.

Potential jurors were asked many questions ranging from what gadgets they owned to whether they worked for either company -- the U.S. District Court in San Jose is just a few miles from Apple's Cupertino headquarters.

As it turned out, both a Google and Apple employee were in the pool of potential jurors, along with numerous former tech workers. Those two individuals did not make it into the final group, though a man who told the court that he had once been involved with a patent-related lawsuit made it on the final jury.

Apple's effort is focused on getting billions in damages from Samsung, as well as potentially keeping some of its most popular products off store shelves. That's despite the fact that Apple buys billions of dollars worth of components from Samsung, including memory and LCD panels, to make its iOS devices.

Samsung's argument centers on the idea that Apple's suit against it threatens to "stifle" innovation among other device-makers if it's successful. Samsung also plans to argue that the iPhone could have never come to be without some of its technology, and those from other companies.

The questioning of prospective jurors demonstrated the challenge of finding a Silicon Valley jury with no bias toward either Apple or Google, companies that are headquartered just a few miles away from the federal courthouse. Both Apple and Google employ thousands in Northern California.

Judge Lucy Koh questioned nearly three dozen members of the jury pool on a host of issues, Reuters reported, including their choice of phones, how the economic downturn affected their lives, experience with the legal system and connections to either Samsung, Apple, Google Inc or its Motorola Mobility unit.

Google is a background actor in the trial as Samsung's smartphones run on Google's Android operating system. Many analysts see Apple's global patent wars as a proxy war against Google.

A Google employee in the jury pool acknowledged he bought two iPads, but also owned Samsung phones and a Galaxy tablet.

"You're good for the economy, I guess," Koh said.

Source : http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/368450/20120730/apple-samsung-patent-infringement-trial-jury.htm