Google engineers, including former Android Chief Andy Rubin, may testify during the second patent lawsuit trial between Apple and Samsung, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Samsung will reportedly use the testimonials to prove that it licensed four out of the five software features it is accused of infringing upon, as it contends that Google had already been working on the technologies before Apple filed for patents.
To help defend Samsung, Google engineers are expected to take the stand to refute Apple's arguments that it forged new ground with the iPhone. Andy Rubin, the former head of Google's mobile business who oversaw the development of Android, is listed as a potential witness. Mr. Rubin worked for Apple from 1989 to 1992.
"Google will be a lot more front and center than in previous cases," said Michael Carrier, a patent expert and law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "Google vs. Apple makes it more of a clash of the titans on the same turf."
Apple's list of asserted patents include those for hyperlinking, background syncing of data, Siri's universal search capabilities, auto-complete, and slide-to-unlock. Samsung states that all of these features found on its Galaxy devices are Android features, except for slide-to-unlock functionality. The second trial covers more recent devices such as the Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy Tab 10.1, the iPhone 4/4s/5, the iPad 2/3/4, the iPad mini, and fourth and fifth generation iPod touch.
Following the conclusion of the original patent lawsuit that covered older devices, and the subsequent damages retrial to redetermine a segment of the reward, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $890 million.
A report last week also noted that Samsung plans to call Google's VP of engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer, and Todd Pendleton, Samsung's marketing chief for its U.S. telecoms division to the stand. Meanwhile, Apple expects to call marketing chief Phil Schiller and possibly former SVP of iOS Software Scott Forstall among many others.
Top Rated Comments
Samsung is counter-suing on the basis of standard-essential patents, meaning technical patents that are so basic that one cannot hold-out - by law, it must be licensed to anyone for a "reasonable fee". Apple contends that Samsung is asking for more than the value of the standard patents, effectively desiring to steal value from Apple in excess of the value of the patents.
The nihilists who want to claim both sides are equally at wrong proclaim that both are suing for patents, and both claims are thus equivalent and absurd or cancel out, or proof that there should be no such thing as patents.
The Samsung brigade claims Samsung suing is proof that Apple copies too. Furthermore, it downplays the fact that Samsung devices were blatant copies by the absurd reduction of the iPhone to "a black rectangle", and, as Samsung's lawyers said "who can have the right to black rectangles". The insult to everyone's intelligence not withstanding, the Samsung brigade has taken up the lawyer's slogan.
The Apple brigade claims that Samsung is a shameless copy-master with copying so ingrained in it's corporate culture that the poor kleptocrats don't even understand right from wrong anymore.
Helpful?
I hope neither one wins. This is like the poster child of why software patents (and their trials) are just plain dumb.
For example, the "universal search" is something that people have been doing for years. Whether or not Samsung infringed, all hinges on what a missing comma means, and which year dictionary is used. You might as well flip a coin.
Ditto for the "hot links" for recognizing things like phone numbers in text, and for keyboard "word completion", or for Samsung's patent on compressing video.
None of these are novel inventions, so it comes down to whether or not one company's developers implemented something in the same way that the other filed a patent on... a situation which is NOT about copying, but about developers doing the same thing a world apart.
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Not helpful at all. This is how misinformation gets spread. The thinly veiled knocks on Samsung are not convincing in an honest summary. You would have been better served by just saying "Samsung copied the s#%t out of Apple's ideas". I personally think they both need to stop this crap but that's just my opinion. No matter which company wins, it doesn't benefit us at all.
Hopefully the lawyers can finish this trial quickly so they can make it back to Cupertino in time to finish working on the iWatch.
/sarcasm
This trial has nothing to do with SEPs.
This trial, like most software patent trials, is about asking a jury of people off the street to decide technical issues that often confuse people with decades of specific experience.
And of course, it's about infringement, not copying, since it's extremely unlikely that either side stole any code or even looked at the other's methods.
Then there's the royalty payments that Apple wants. They're so outrageous, that even Florian Mueller, who is well known as being pro-Apple and anti-Samsung, wrote:
Not to mention that this could backfire on Apple, when they later have to pay Samsung and others. A jury could decide that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.