Economics

Post-Trial Document Dump Reveals Misleading Apple Arguments

Samsung's CEO noted the iPhone was the gold standard in the smart phone industry when he said to build something like it

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A nine person jury in August found Samsung guilty of infringing Apple's (AAPL) design and software patents this past summer, and awarded the Cupertino-based company $1.051 billion in damages. In the months following the trial, Judge Lucy Koh has ordered a number of documents asserted in the lawsuit be unsealed and unredacted. And after sorting through what had to be hours, if not days, of legal jargon, tech law blog Groklaw identified a number of misleading arguments Apple used against Samsung (005930).

Apple's attorneys used a Samsung internal memo as proof the company blatantly copied the iPhone. Within the memo, Samsung mobile boss JK Shin expressed outrage at how far his company's user experience had fallen behind Apple's, noting the difference "is truly that of Heaven and Earth" and Samsung was suffering from a "crisis of design." Apple revealed that Shin told his designers to "make something like the iPhone," although the company left out key parts of the quote.