Apple v. Samsung - Meet the foreman of the jury

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/25/apple-v-samsung-meet-the-foreman-of-the-jury/

by hornbaker • 14 years ago

35 48 14 years ago

tech.fortune.cnn.com

nirvana6• 14 years ago

I think this is actually bad news. Since the guy has a patent to his name, that means he understood what patents are. (EG: protection for unique inventions, not monopolies on features or ideas.)

If the jury had been completely non-technical, and subjected to the nonsense propaganda you see so much these days (that patents are "trivial" and that they cover ideas) and still found in Apple's favor, then this would bolster the trust one can have in the court system.

Further, it is kinda funny that the foreman of the jury has more technical knowledge than many of the posters on "Hacker News", who seem to have no patents and little understanding of what patents are.

nohat2• 14 years ago

Are you saying that the apple patents are unique inventions? I ask for clarity because that is not a common position on hackernews.

nirvana6• 14 years ago

It is common for android fans on hacker news to assert that the patents are invalid because the same features exist in android phones, but this is not only a temporal error, but implied a lack of understanding of what patents even are.

I've not seen any arguments on hacker news that the patents are invalid. Period. Full Stop. I've seen this assertion many times and the claim that it is "obvious" but it is clear to me that the people making the assertion have never read the patent and don't know the first thing about patents.

gdubs• 14 years ago

Jurors don't have to be ignorant of a subject to be objective. Further, it's up to the lawyers on both sides to dismiss a juror during selection if they think they'll be biased. They didn't, probably because both sides -- believing they were in the right -- thought that someone with knowledge of patents would ultimately see things their way.

cromwellian2• 14 years ago

The guy's patent is for a device that simply saves streaming media to a hard-drive and plays it back. Basically a PVR/set-top or video iPod. Is this non-obvious? If anything, this indicates to me someone who's mentality is pro aggressive IP ownership and enforcement. Like having someone who works for the RIAA/MPAA as a juror in a BitTorrent downloading case.

I wonder how the case would have went if it the jury had been assembled from 9 people who have been working on touch interfaces for the last 20 years.

nirvana6• 14 years ago

You seem to imply you've read the patent. Could you find the specific claims and then show us some prior art for them?

Many things become "obvious" after they have entered commercial production, but are not obvious at the time they are invented. The car is obvious now, for instance.

Your comment about the jury assumes there were touch interfaces 20 years ago (of a type relevant to this case.) Apple started in the 1990s, but even Jeff Han is using a completely different method.

This seems to imply that you're confusing patents for a "right to sell a feature". On this site I've seen many claims that Apple's patents are covered by "prior art" but the "art" cited is generally nonsensical (eg: 2001: a space odessy having square tablets) and indicate that people think patents cover ideas or features, rather than inventions used to bring them to life.

Just because the TiVo exists, does not mean that I can't, today, invent a novel method of solving similar problems to the TiVo that is legitimately patentable.

TiVo's existence doesn't make patentable inventions in the same space impossible.

The rotary engine was patentable even though other internal combustion engines were already on the market.

woodchuck64• 14 years ago

I like Groklaw's comment (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390)

" If it would take a lawyer three days to make sure he understood the terms in the form, how did the jury not need the time to do the same? There were 700 questions, remember, and one thing is plain, that the jury didn't take the time to avoid inconsistencies, one of which resulted in the jury casually throwing numbers around, like $2 million dollars for a nonfringement.

Come on. This is farce. "

nirvana6• 14 years ago

The jury had 14 days of hearing evidence. It is quite possible that the case was so compelling that it didn't take them very long to decide the points.

I've yet to see any argument that the verdict is wrong, based on an understanding of the patents in question.

jlgreco4• 14 years ago

Can you explain how patents don't grant a type of legal monopoly? This seems non-obvious to me, and poking around on Wikipedia has only served to reinforce my suspicion that they are.

nirvana6• 14 years ago

They do grant a type of legal monopoly... but on an invention, not on a feature. So, in my example, Jeff Han demonstrated pinch to zoom using cameras photographing your hans, while Apple has a patent on an invention that lets a screen figure out where your fingers are. They both could be patented and have a legal monopoly on their inventions even though they are the "same thing".

If your objection is to there being a monopoly at all, I can understand that. But please then consider several things- for instance, if this system were abolished then companies like Apple would be obscuring their methods to prevent copying, and their platforms would be more locked down. I think if we lived in a world without patents, many of the anti-IP people would be advocating for a requirement that companies like Apple publish the nature of their inventions.

JoelSutherland4• 14 years ago

Hi, I'm a poster on Hacker News and I can read.

Here is the core claim from the '915 patent:

  A machine implemented method for scrolling on a touch-sensitive display of a device
  comprising:

  1. receiving a user input, the user input is one or more input points applied to
  the touch-sensitive display that is integrated with the device;

  2. creating an event object in response to the user input;

  3. determining whether the event object invokes a scroll or gesture operation by
  distinguishing between a single input point applied to the touch-sensitive display
  that is interpreted as the scroll operation and two or more input points applied to
  the touch-sensitive display that are interpreted as the gesture operation;

  4. issuing at least one scroll or gesture call based on invoking the scroll or
  gesture operation;

  5. responding to at least one scroll call, if issued, by scrolling a window having
  a view associated with the event object based on an amount of a scroll with the
  scroll stopped at a predetermined position in relation to the user input; and

  6. responding to at least one gesture call, if issued, by scaling the view
  associated with the event object based on receiving the two or more input points in
  the form of the user input.

Here is text from the paper (http://www.sonycsl.co.jp/person/rekimoto/papers/chi02.pdf) that accompanied this 2002 video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waSXkJBKT1s#t=2m20s) of this exact same behavior:

  Figure 12 shows a map browsing system. The user scrolls the map by sliding a ﬁnger
  along the sensor surface. If the user touches the surface with two or more ﬁngers,
  by changing the distance from the ﬁngers to the surface, he/she can control the map
  scale. Simultaneous control of scrolling and zooming is intuitive, because the user
  feels as if his or her ﬁngers are ﬁxed to the map’s surface.

It is true that I don't understand patents very well. But, those are the same thing.

Since you seem to understand the patent system well enough to drop generalizations about the HN population, would you please explain how this can be and also why it should be.

skue3• 14 years ago

IANAL either, but I would certainly not presume that your example describes the same thing from an IP standpoint.

For example, you could start with the first sentence in Apple's claim: it applies to a "touch-sensitive display." What you cited incorporates a touch-sensitive sensor without a display that responds similarly. It's not unreasonable to say that a projector screen is not the same as a display.

lines• 14 years ago

This Apple expert purports to rebut the SmartSkin as prior art: it notes the "touch-sensitive display" thing plus claims that SmartSkin might not use an "event object" or "scroll or gesture call" to achieve the effect. Make of thy what you will...

http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califor...

danielweber• 14 years ago

Did the guy invite media interviews, or has the media just taken it upon themselves to pick his life apart in great detail for him doing his civic duty?

larsberg• 14 years ago

That poor guy will never be able to go out for Korean food again...

guelo• 14 years ago

I wonder what phone he owns. People seem to develop a strong personal attachment to their brand of smartphone.

lomegor• 14 years ago

I think I've read somewhere that none of the jury's had a Samsung phone or an iPhone and that few of them had smartphones.

learc83• 14 years ago

Woah, I can't believe this guy got through voir dire. He has a patent, seems like something Samsung would have really wanted to avoid.

wamatt• 14 years ago

Steve Jobs: "Good artists borrow, great artists steal"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

therefore... oh wait

Apple v. Samsung - Meet the foreman of the jury

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