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Does it really matter from what country a company is?

Especially when that company is publicly traded and outsources manufacturing?

When you're dealing with typical US citizens, it sure does. Most people here have a tendency to see anything and everything "American" as superior and/or in the right as opposed to anything foreign. It's a misplaced national pride since, to be quite honest, we really don't do much when compared to other regions of the world. Most citizens here have been brainwashed into thinking we do everything and the rest of the world is just our playground, both by the media and the flag-wavers.


Irrelevant to your average joe here unless, of course, they lost their job because of outsourcing. They don't care: If the company is headquartered here and they get the product first, where it's been made and by whom doesn't even enter into their mind. It also doesn't help that those who try to raise awareness of these problems have a way of going overboard in their antics, which only increases the one-sided worldview.

When you're dealing with typical US citizens, it sure does. Most people here have a tendency to see anything and everything "American" as superior and/or in the right as opposed to anything foreign. It's a misplaced national pride since, to be quite honest, we really don't do much when compared to other regions of the world. Most citizens here have been brainwashed into thinking we do everything and the rest of the world is just our playground, both by the media and the flag-wavers.

Especially when that company is publicly traded and outsources manufacturing?

Irrelevant to your average joe here unless, of course, they lost their job because of outsourcing. They don't care: If the company is headquartered here and they get the product first, where it's been made and by whom doesn't even enter into their mind. It also doesn't help that those who try to raise awareness of these problems have a way of going overboard in their antics, which only increases the one-sided worldview. "

If that were 100% true, then the Atari Jaguar that was / is the only video game system from the 16-bit era and later that was manufactured in the USA. But we know how that went... Americans sadly have accepted that everything is made overseas, even if the main company is here. The only reason Apple survives and succeeds is because of the 'ooh, it's shiny' people (i.e. women and Metrosexuals.)

The courtroom transcripts say otherwise - as clearly mentioned and proven in the article.

Here is the question in, uh, question:

"LET'S CONTINUE WITH THE QUESTIONS.
THE NEXT QUESTION IS, HAVE YOU OR A
FAMILY MEMBER OR SOMEONE VERY CLOSE TO YOU EVER
BEEN INVOLVED IN A LAWSUIT, EITHER AS A PLAINTIFF,
A DEFENDANT, OR AS A WITNESS?"

Nothing about a time period.

Edited 2012-10-03 16:13 UTC

Simply legally covering his ass, nothing more. Nothing whatsoever in the court transcripts (which are publicly available) indicates a 10 year limit was ever presented to the jurors in any context. Furthermore, since the case in question (and associated bankruptcy) was > 10 years ago, it also wouldn't show up in a routine background check, so without him stating it, there would have been no other way to discover it without significantly more time for juror verification than was given. (Judge Koh put some quite severe and unusual time constraints on pretty much every aspect of this case)

I also don't see Samsung's follow-up question of, "And have you been involved in other legal cases? If so, please describe them." Because, otherwise, you are just pointing to a couple of questions that he answered perfectly truthfully.

As I previously pointed out, that was due to the time constraints Judge Koh imposed on the trial, they really couldn't do as thorough of a juror investigation as they realistically would have liked without cutting into their allotted time for the rest of the case. Furthermore, while his answer may have been truthful, the lawsuit he did disclose was arguably much less relevant to the case than the one he omitted, and his comments in various interviews post-trial have made it clear that he did so deliberately to ensure he got on the jury.

Yes, trials are limited in time. So what? Voire dire doesn't go on forever, ad infinitum so that every personal fact of every potential juror is laid bare. It is the Court and legal representations responsibility to unearth the most relevant facts, and beyond that it's the Court's responsibility to pledge a citizen to uphold the law.

Seems to be a problem with this particular juror in that he doesn't pay attention to questions and instructions and does his own thing.

That's fine in many areas of life - usually the only person who gets screwed is you; but jury service is something special where other people's lives are in your hands and you have to pay attention and confuse yourself

I don't know the guy, but from what I read he does seem a bit odd which makes it even more odd he got picked as the main man.

To me it seems more logical, if you want to do jury trails, that they at least employ a professional person who leads the jury. Someone who knows the do's and don'ts.

If I understand correctly, it was the jury that nominated him forman, not the judge nor lawyers.

Yes, I also think that's the case. They probably picked him because of his age and personality. He seems to be very talkative so chances are he was the most vocal and dominant of the bunch.

No matter who gets picked, capable or not, they should have some one who just tags along to make sure they don't make a mess of it.

Just like sports have referees I guess.

From what I've gathered, the jury picked him because they believed he knew what he was talking about.

This was a very convoluted trial. Massively over-complicated in fact. So I don't really blame the jury if they were overwhelmed by all the information provided. Not that it excuses Hogan -nor anyone else- influencing other jurors.

And his response is truthful. Not a violation of voire dire.

All I see is Samsung pointing out the poor representation provided by their legal council.

I don't particularly see what a god has to do with it, but other than that I almost agree. Personally, I don't see the point of jury trials. Not only is there no such thing as an impartial person, but they also actively weed out any people that have any knowledge whatsoever of the field in question. How, exactly, are you going to get a proper judgement when they do that? In order to judge something correctly, one must at least have some basic grounding in what they are judging. Still, that's never stopped us before has it? The whole system is one giant cock-up. And no, I'm not saying this because I think Samsung should have won. Personally, I think they should have both been tossed out on their asses and possibly even jailed for wasting the court's time with this ridiculous crap.

Hm, the most popular deity, in his own book of Abrahamic mythology, regularly displays some ridiculously childish, biased (and so on) behaviour...

"Does anybody honestly think that any of this stuff about this juror made any difference to the trials outcome?"

Absolutely! You need to go read the groklaw coverage on this. The whole thing needs to be thrown out and redone.

That's news to me!

Sadly, Groklaw is heavily biased. It is too bad too, the used to be a good site for stuff. You would think that a site talking about legal issues would try to remain impartial.

When a site (or person) becomes popular they want to stay popular, Groklaw is no different. They write what their readers want to read.

Yet, Groklaw is still spot-on. They have an almost impeccable track record on the stuff they report on.

I guess reality is biased.

Edited 2012-10-03 20:28 UTC

They have an almost impeccable track record on the stuff they report

I beg to differ, they have screwed it more than once and never taking it back.

Examples?

Let's start with this one:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jul-31.html

How 'bout taking a juror mentioning his last court experience as an answer to the question of "have you ever been involved in a legal proceeding" as a lie and violation of voire dire?

I can't see how any rational person can make that leap without already having a conclusion they want to occur already set in their head.

Edited 2012-10-03 21:22 UTC

The question here isn't the correctness of the conclusion, but its reliability. If there were procedural errors along the way (as seems to be the case), then the outcome of the case cannot be relied upon and it should be retried.


If you dig deep enough, you can find dirt about anybody on nearly any topic. Now I'm not claiming Samsung or Google are innocent here, all I'm saying is that I'm unsure about whether the jury's verdict was arrived at via due process.

Another fact of the matter, that even you must admit to, is the fact that Apple didn't re-invent the phone, no matter how much they claim to. Much of the tech existed before and Apple simply found a nicer way to market it. That is not to say that they haven't contributed anything, but I simply think that what they have contributed doesn't warrant such wide protection as they claim they deserve.


People copy all the time from each other, that's how culture and technology advances. We all stand on the shoulders of those that went before us. The larger question in most people's minds about this trial (in general) is whether protecting monopolies on some rather vague ideas is going to help advance society or not.

You're the most religious Apple fanboi on this site, and accuse others of being clouded by prejudice. Funny.

The evidence from the trial revealed that the juror made fraudulent claims (new CPU arch: invention), misleading the jury, and that some products were banned although they were not shown to infringe (one of which was recently overturned). The only thing the trial revealed was that it was a mistrial.

If you even had the slightest idea what you were talking about, you wouldn't ask such a ridiculous question.

Quite often cases are won or lost primarily on the choices of the jury. Some individuals are more susceptible to some arguments than others are (e.g. you have a clear bias towards Apple so are more susceptible to arguments like "Apple invented all forms of prior art"). So the lawyers profile the potential jurors and try to select the best candidates for their case.

In this instance, Samsung majorly dropped the ball by not vetoing Hogan. The moment they knew he had a patent, they should have dismissed him as existing patent holders are more likely to be sympathetic with other patent holders than those accused of IP 'theft'.

However the problems didn't end there. Hogan went above and beyond the call of duty - he pretty much dictated how the other jurors should vote (OK, he didn't force them into voting a specific way, but his guidance was a massive influence for their decision).

This alone undermines the whole process of having a jury, but what's worse is that Hogan has prior history (re: the past trial) that gives him clear motivation for a vendetta vote instead of one decided impartially and based upon review of the evidence provided from both parties.

So not only do you have a potentially corrupt juror, but one that also influenced the rest of the jury to vote the same way he had and thus push through an unjust result.

To any sane person (read: anyone not blinded by their own Apple fanaticism), that would agree that this was a clear cut case of an unfair trial; a trial mislead by a single juror with a personal agenda.

So the real question is, does Samsung have enough of a case to get granted a retrial?

Edited 2012-10-03 21:21 UTC

Wouldn't you be if somebody told you you were out of a billion bucks? :-)


Was this on design-related patents, or technology-related ones? The distinction is important because a lot of non-trivial research goes into modern electrical engineering tech (see [1], [2] and [3] for examples of EE labs), whereas it is arguable whether the same goes into design.

[1] http://www.npl.co.uk/upload/img/electromagnetic-anechoic-chamber.jp...
[2] http://www.ece.lsu.edu/labs/images/2012/ashok-lab.jpeg
[3] http://www.ee.buffalo.edu/images/lab_cartwright.jpg

So what was your point? The juror said in later interviews that he used previous knowledge exactly as he told the judge that he wouldn't. How does that show Groklaw as anything other than spot on?