Following Samsung’s recent $1 billion court loss to Apple, in which the jury found the company in violation of a number of Apple’s patents, Samsung now claims that the trial was unfair, and that the jury used outside information not approved by the court to make their decision.
CNET reports:
Samsung is alleging juror misconduct in new court filings asking a federal judge to throw out Apple’s billion-dollar jury verdict and allow a new trial.
In a flurry of court documents, Samsung’s attorneys list a series of cases, including ones that federal courts in California must follow, in which juror misconduct prompted a new trial. Their apparent argument: interviews that jurors in the landmark case gave to news organizations provide evidence of misconduct serious enough to have influenced the verdict.
Samsung claims that jury foreman Velvin Hogan used his patent expertise to “guide” the rest of the jury to the conclusion that they reached, shaping their views on what should and should and should not be considered prior art. The foreman had also been warned beforehand that decisions should be based according to the law alone, and not based on your understanding of the law based on your own cases.”
The report cites a claim from Manuel Ilagan, one of the jurors in the case:
“Some were not sure of how prior art could either render a patent acceptable or whether it could invalidate it,” Hogan said during an interview with Bloomberg. “What we did is we started talking about one… (I) laid it out for them.”
It’s very uncommon for a jury verdict to be overturned or officially investigated after the fact; nevertheless, Samsung cites a number of cases which were in fact overturned for jury misconduct.
While I can’t comment on the validity of Samsung’s claims (though I do have certain reservations on the subject), if I were Samsung, I’d certainly want a do-over too!