Apple v Samsung - Yet more Revelations

The BBC website carries an interview with Mr. Velvin Hogan, foreman of the jury in the Apple trial in California (see "Apple versus Samsung: Full interview with the jury foreman" BBC website 31 Aug 2012). . Mr. Hogan is chief technology officer at Multicast Labs, which develops video technology for the web, and he claims to have been familiar with the US patent system before the trial.

This interview is fascinating for several reasons. For Mr. Hogan

"one of the most decisive pieces of evidence was reading the minutes for myself of a meeting that was held at a very high level between Google executives and Samsung executives, where it was for a tablet and Google was concerned that for the sake of their operating system that the look and feel and the methodology that they [Samsung] were using to create their tablet was getting too close to what Apple was doing.

And in the memo themselves - remember this was minutes - they stated that Google demanded that they back away from that design. And later there was a follow-up memo among themselves, these executives, and in black and white it says: we elect to not pass this information down to the divisions that were actually involved in the design.

So, from the sake of the engineers they went merrily along continuing their design not given any orders to back away. They knew nothing of that meeting."

Juries have never sat in the Chancery Division in England and even in the Queen's Bench Division they have been abolished for everything except defamation and a handful of other torts. Moreover, such an interview could never have taken place in this country. On the one occasion I had to sit on a jury the judge warned us in terms to say nothing about the case once we were discharged.

This interview was reported the same day as Judge Tamotsu Shoji found for Samsung in the Tokyo District Court ("Tokyo court gives win to Samsung after US loss" 31 Aug BBC) and Mrs. Justice Gloster delivered judgment in Abramovich against Berezovsky ("Roman Abramovich wins court battle against Berezovsky" BBC 31 Aug. Our civil justice system may be very expensive but then so is a Rolls Royce and like a Rolls Royce it can be very, very good. Would two Russian plutocrats have preferred to settle their differences before a California jury? Somehow  think not.