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  1. Science & Tech
1 August 2012updated 27 Sep 2023 12:52pm

Samsung v Apple gets contempt of court-y

The Korean tech giant released prohibited evidence to the press, angering the presiding judge

By Alex Hern

Apple versus Samsung got off to a turbulent start yesterday, with the presiding judge, Lucy Koh, berating the Korean tech giant for what looks very much like attempted contempt of court.

Apple’s lawsuit, which is over allegations that Samsung deliberately copied Apple’s patented designs for the iPhone for its own smartphone products, is matched by a countersuit from Samsung, alledging that Apple is in breach of its own patents relating to mobile phone technology. Apple is attempting to portraty its opponent as an admitted copycat which only resorted to patent suits when it couldn’t defend its designs on their own merits, while Samsung is trying to argue that Apple is the real copycat.

Some of the evidence presented yesterday is more compelling than others. Apple pointed to internal Samsung documents describing the iPhone as “easy to copy”, while Samsung argues that much of what Apple claims is “magical” design was in fact industry standard long before the iPhone.

However, Samsung was angered by the judge’s decision not to let them submit some evidence to the jury which they deemed crucial. Two arguments, that Apple itself may have ripped off Sony, and that Samsung had an iPhone lookalike in development before the phone’s release, were prevented from being presented in court due to late submissions.

Both these arguments have been in the public domain for several days now, and the Sony claim isn’t as strong as Samsung may hope. The company pointed out that Apple itself sent round an internal brief to design a “Sony-like” phone, which would eventually become the iPhone. The problem Samsung has it that this is the Sony phone (pic) they alledge Apple ripped off, and it is a far cry from the outcome of that prototyping session, the “Jony” phone (pic), named after Apple designer Jony Ive. Meanwhile, the difference between Samsung’s Vibrant (pic) and an iPhone is less obvious.

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But the latter defence is one that the company may regret not getting in. The Verge has a picture of the slide Samsung were hoping to show the jury, which shows five different internal prototypes of touchscreen, one-button phones in development before the iPhone’s announcement in January 2007.

Unfortunately, while the decision by the judge not to allow that to be shown in court may have damaged Samsung’s chances, the company itself may have done far worse. Immediately following Judge Koh’s final rejection, Samsung “emailed its rejected slides regarding F700 development and the ‘Sony-style’ prototype to the press with a statement saying ‘The excluded evidence would have established beyond doubt that Samsung did not copy the iPhone design,'” according to the Verge‘s Nilay Patel.

Worse still, the statement argues that “fundamental fairness requires that the jury decide the case based on all the evidence”. One person’s plaintive cry of unfairness sounds a lot like another’s nudge-and-wink suggestion that the jury ought to see evidence banned from court anyway. Judge Koh was “livid” when she found out, and demanded to know who authorised the release. This is a move that could come back to haunt Samsung.

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