The end of the Apple-Samsung trial is drawing near, as the final day of witness testimonies is now complete. Both sides have exhausted their allotted 25 hours of arguments, and the case will soon be turned over to the jury.
In honor of this occasion, we thought we’d take a look back at some of the week’s more interesting moments in the case, from Samsung’s denial of copying Apple’s icons, to Judge Koh’s “smoking crack” comment…
- Sick of the arguing – one of the more interesting aspects of this trial has been US District Court Judge Lucy Koh. She’s had no problems telling the attorneys from both sides what’s on her mind, and this week started off with her ordering them to stop arguing and agree on final jury instructions.
- We didn’t copy Apple’s icons – last week, Apple’s attorneys show the jury some half a dozen images of Samsung’s icons and how they were similar to those found in iOS. This week, Samsung called on the designer of its Galaxy icons Jeeyuen Wang to testify. Obviously she testified that she didn’t copy.
- Apple lifted the iPad’s design – one of Apple’s many claims against Samsung is that it intentionally copied the design of its iPad. Whether it did or didn’t, Samsung’s best line of defense against this in court is to present prior art. And it did, or at least tried to, with this tablet from 1981.
- Galaxy Tab 10.1 came first – Samsung brought its industrial designer, Jin Soo Kim, to talk about the timeline of the company’s work on its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. The word is, Samsung watched Apple unveil its iPad 2, and sent its designers “back to the drawing board.” This one’s interesting.
- Are you smoking crack? – this hilarious line from Judge Koh probably made 1000 headlines yesterday. The comment came after Apple’s attorneys submitted a 75-page briefing of witness instructions. Koh, being the outspoken person she is, told Apple’s litigation team to pare it down.
The testimony phase ended on a dull note today. Most of the day’s witnesses were return witnesses, and Samsung’s side was pretty quiet, as it only had 46 minutes of court time left compared to Apple’s four hours.
There will likely be some last-minute filings over the weekend, and lawyers will meet with the Judge on Monday for final instructions. The trial resumes Tuesday with closing arguments, and then it’ll be handed over to the jury.
And the verdict they deliver will be one of the biggest in corporate history. If Apple wins, Samsung could owe as much as $2.5 billion dollars in damages. And if Apple loses, that opens up its designs and patents to a lot more copying.
Stay tuned.
[Image credit: Vicki Behringer]