Jury Foreman in Apple vs. Samsung Case Speaks to Rationale for Verdict

With the landmark Apple vs. Samsung patent and design lawsuit resulting a $1 billion verdict for Apple late last week, considerable discussion about the jury's decision-making process has been making the rounds. Several members of the jury, including foreman Velvin Hogan, gave interviews after the trial, but a new video interview of Hogan by Bloomberg Television's Emily Chang provides some additional insight into the jury's thinking. The nearly 17-minute segment covers a number of topics including the jury dynamics, calculation of damages, and how Hogan's own experience with patents and financial statements helped guide the discussion and evaluation.

Hogan notes that he initially thought the case might swing Samsung's way as the jury initially had some difficulty assessing how the validity of the patents should be decided and applied to the case.

We were at a stalemate, but some of the jurors were not sure of the patent prosecution process. Some were not sure of how prior art could either render a patent acceptable or whether it could invalidate it. What we did is we started talking about one and when the day was over and I was at home, thinking about that patent claim by claim, limit by limit, I had what we would call an a-ha moment and I 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. They understood the points I was talking about and then we meticulously went patent by patent and claim by claim against the test that the judge had given us, because each patent had a different legal premise to judge on. We got those all sorted out and decided which ones were valid and which ones were not.

Hogan also reiterates the jury's view that comments by Google demanding that Samsung tweak its product designs to look less similar to the iPhone and iPad were particularly damning, indicating that Samsung's infringement was willful as it took in Google's advice and opted not to follow it.

Overall, the jury found that the evidence in the case "spoke overwhelmingly" to Samsung's infringement, with the jury having put "each side to the test" equally in weighing both validity and infringement claims, working through each of the involved devices and claimed infringements to reach the $1 billion verdict. Hogan also walks through how that dollar amount was reached, using their own calculations of how much Apple lost in profits from sales of the infringing Samsung devices and then adding in royalty amounts to achieve a final number.