Ever since the verdict came out of that trial on August 24th it’s been certain that Samsung would appeal such a decision. The days after the trial finished and the Jury – particularly Velvin Hogan who became foreman – began to talk to the media it started to look like Samsung were having their case for appeal built for them. Indeed, Mr Hogan was only too kind to speak to media outlets a couple of times and the first time he spoke to Bloomberg he gave the Internet the quote that has Samsung’s lawyers pretty confident about right now:
“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… (I) laid it out for them.”
The above quote doesn’t sound like much at all, does it? Yet it’s something I’m sure a lot of you have read a lot over the last month or so. What makes this quote troubling is that when looking at Judge Koh’s instructions to the Jury it clearly states that jurors should “decide the case solely on the evidence before you,” which is certainly want Mr Hogan didn’t do. Hogan essentially injected new evidence into the case after evidence had already been presented by both Apple and Samsung – something that wasn’t in the instructions and basically invalidates the Jury’s verdict. It gets worse however as just one day after the verdict another juror – Manuel Llegan spoke to CNet and had this to say of Hogan:
“Hogan was jury foreman, he had experience. He owned patents himself…so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier.”
I’m sure the jury appreciated this as it will have cut the deliberation time, I’m sure however, this was not Hogan’s place and will have artificially altered some of the jurors’ reasoning, thus creating a false verdict. Samsung have now demanded that the verdict be thrown out thanks to the latest in Hogan’s mistakes – failing to disclose litigation between himself and Seagate who were his previous employer. It was this litigation that led to Hogan filing for bankruptcy in 1993. Samsung are a huge investor of Seagate and in the motion they filed they had this to say:
“Samsung has a substantial strategic relationship with Seagate, which culminated last year in the publicized sale of a division to Seagate in a deal worth $1.375 billion, making Samsung the single largest direct shareholder of Seagate.”
When approached for Jury duty Hogan was asked of previous involvements in court cases and should disclosed such information however, it’s said that he didn’t. For somebody who seemed to be somewhat educated when it comes to technology, Hogan seems to have made a number of mistakes and whilst we all do and few enjoy jury duty, for such a high-profile case you’d tread carefully. Especially with such huge sums of money involved.
[Source: CNET]