[conspire] Patent Case Fall Out

[Rick Moen]

There's also a bunch of news at Groklaw about the basis for Samsung's
request for a new trial.  I've covered some of that before, but we're
also seeing:

1.  A _lot_ of evidence of juror misconduct, primarily involving foreman
Velvin Hogan.  For one, he failed to disclose relevant prior litigation
he'd been a party to, when asked about it during jury selection.  Also,
and more damning, he was asked during jury selection whether he would
set aside all he knew of patent law from his own experience and just
follow the court's instructions and judge based solely on evidence
admitted at trial, answered 'yes', and then did the exact opposite while
running the jury, including bringing in extraneous materials that had
never been admitted into evidence.  He also did not speak up during jury
selection when the judge asked if any of the prospective jurors had
strong feelings in favour of patents, which he very much proved to have
during trial.

2.  Challenges to many more of the patents, based on both prior art and
prior patents.

3.  Federal Court of Appeals informed the trial court that its reliance
on a particular case was 'at best incorrect' and reverse part of the
trial court's ruling (the injuction against Galaxy Nexus).

4.  The judge has pretty much granted every motion to unseal (reveal to
the public) all details of this mess, showing that she's unimpresed by
arguments that, e.g., Mr. Hogan's privacy outweighs the public interest
in seeing what's up.


One summation from PJ:

  We've been watching the smartphone patent wars for a while now, and
  what have we learned? I've learned that all the vendors are infringing
  somebody's patents. And that means we can all drop the phony moral
  indignation and think about what we should do about the patent mess the
  world has gotten itself into by allowing software patents. Clearly, the
  current situation is untenable.