"Quick Justice" Jury Verdict in Apple v. Samsung Cupertino Case Is Very Unlikely to Withstand Judicial Challenge on Appeal Due to Errors by the Judge and Jury

The jury verdict in this case was issued so quickly that it is virtually impossible that the jury read their instructions completely and carefully, which they must do, and they must obey those instructions. All the evidence points to the jury NOT reading all the instructions fully and being led astray by their possibly not unbiased patent-holding foreman.

Groklaw has the story at Jury in Apple v. Samsung Goofed, Damages Reduced -- Uh Oh. What's Wrong With this Picture? ~pj Updated 4Xs writing inter alia in Update 2 (excerpted here) as follows:

"Update 2: Dan Levine of Reuters has some words from the foreman:

"We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable." ...

[Groklaw] ... Had they read the full jury instructions, all 109 pages [as PDF], they would have read that damages are not supposed to punish, merely to compensate for losses. Here's what they would have found in Final Jury Instruction No. 35, in part:

The amount of those damages must be adequate to compensate the patent holder for the infringement. A damages award should put the patent holder in approximately the financial position it would have been in had the infringement not occurred, but in no event may the damages award be less than a reasonable royalty. You should keep in mind that the damages you award are meant to compensate the patent holder and not to punish an infringer.

The same instruction is repeated in Final Jury Instruction No. 53, in case they missed it the first time. Did they obey those instructions? Nay, did they even read them? The evidence, judging by the foreman's reported words, point the wrong way."

Yup. Trial over.

Press the Restart (Reset) Button.

Read the whole article at Groklaw here.