There may be an issue with the jury in the Apple v Samsung trial. It has emerged that the foreman of the jury owns smart phone patents. Both sides vetted the jury prior to the trial, however.
Velvin Hogan’s 2002 patents cover a “personal video recording/storage apparatus for downloading streaming video and data contents from a number of sources and storing the video files to an internal storage device, such as a disk drive”. These video files can be “retrieved, processed, and provided for viewing on demand at a later time”.
The Daily Mail claims that the disclosure has raised a huge potential conflict of interest. The paper suggests that if he were biased in any way towards Apple it could have had a massive influence on jury's decision.
Of course, both Apple and Samsung were given the opportunity to disqualify potential jurors from the line up is they felt that they had a conflict of interest and did so. In fact, Samsung filed 700 jury-screening questions. Hogan was known to be a patent holder.
Hogan has become a bit of a celebrity following the patent trial. The 67-year-old retired engineer was chosen by other jury members to be the Forman specifically because he was known to hold patents. As one juror told Cnet: “Apple said they owned patents, but we were debating about the prior art... Hogan holds patents, so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier.”
Hogan was interviewed by Bloomberg where he declaired that one evening he had had an “ a-ha moment” when he “suddenly decided I could defend this if it was my patent”.
“And with that, I took that story back to the jury and laid it out for them,” he told Bloomberg. However, it wasn’t a case of the rest of the jury accepting Hogan’s arguments. A 20-year-old juror lead much of the debate, according to Hogan. “He was never willing at first to take anyone's viewpoint until he had thought it out. That was a good thing,” Hogan said.
Another interesting snippet of information that came out of the interview is that nobody on the jury owned an iPhone, and Hogan has not owned any Apple equipment for a “number of years”, “intentionally” he said.
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Comments received
ViewRoyal said on Thu, 30 Aug 2012
The Daily Mail also claims that Velvin Hogan owns and wears shoes... and apparently so did Steve Jobs!!! ;-)
skrvillas said on Thu, 30 Aug 2012
F*ck the Daily Mail.
In American jury trials, there is a process called "Voir dire". Let the bozos at the Mail go look it up in a "dictionary" before they write their next specious article to sell some papers.
Samsung, and their fleet of jury selection experts (DM, go look it up), knew what they were doing. Given the overwhelming evidence against them, Samsung hadn't a chance. Also, FYI Mailboys, on appeal, they can only contest strict matters of law, not that a juror accepted by Samsung had some patents...and NO new evidence can be presented.
Sheesh Daily Mail, stick to what you do best: hounding celebrities and presenting your political agenda.
madbard@warpmail.net said on Thu, 30 Aug 2012
What the what? If he got through voir dire, then it is the fault of the legal teams. But if I had to guess, each side thought having at least one patent holder on the jury would make him sympathetic to their side (Apple or Samsung).
And this is the same publication that posted the story that Pong ~= bounce of a menu during scrolling? I call BS.
MacBiter 2 said on Thu, 30 Aug 2012
Dodgy jury or no dodgy jury, am I the only one to feel deeply uneasy about this whole business? It somehow reminds me of Microsoft bullying Netscape out of existence in the 90s. I'm not saying Samsung didn't tread on a few patents, but they're all doing it (Xerox Park 1979, anyone?). Apple should have just settled for a small royalty % on the products concerned, and left it at that.
I have a feeling that Apple will lose a measure of goodwill over this whole business.
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