Apple and Samsung laid out their respective objections to the other side’s preliminary jury instructions for their upcoming patent trial, which is scheduled for the end of July. The 361 page joint filing came late Friday.
The disputed proposed jury instructions cover a host of procedural necessities regarding juror handling and includes operating minutiae down to when an instruction can be given and how said instruction is phrased. Many objections are based on unnecessary verbiage or when an instruction should be given, though some call race into contention and illustrate the implications of trying an international patent case in the U.S.
Samsung has worries about how a jury may perceive a supporting witnesses ethnicity, objecting to the use of the word “Korean” in Apple’s proposed reading of the opening jury instructions. Samsung wants to remove any relation of ethnicity and expert testimony during the trial and would like to keep the issue of race completely out of the proceedings.
Apple Samsung’s proposed design patent summary which states “[a] ‘design patent’ protects the way an article looks, but not the way it functions.” Apple asserts that the “instruction is misleading because design patents protect articles of manufacture that have or serve a function, so long as the overall design of the article is not “dictated by function.” Similar objections are seen throughout the document.
Judge Lucy Koh will take the proposals into consideration and may request a pared-down set this week.
The jury trial is set to begin with juror selection on July 30.
