Will jurors in Apple-Samsung lawsuit reach fair verdict?

The final hearing of the first trial of a patent suit between Samsung Electronics and Apple that has gone on for the past 16 months was held Tuesday in San Jose Northern District Court in California.

The verdict will be made by the jury and the Justice Department, but the jurors, who are ordinary people, are expected to find it tough to decide given the complex patent issue. Presiding judge Lucy Koh also told the legal teams of both sides that she is worried of serious confusion among the jurors.

Ahead of the hearing, Samsung Vice Chairman Choi Ji-sung and Apple CEO Tim Cook unsuccessfully talked on the phone to narrow their differences, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

○ `Lawsuit of the century`

According to major foreign media including American tech website CNET, jurors received a 100-page jury instruction document and a 36-page verdict form composed of 36 items from Koh. The content is considered highly complex like walking through a swamp.

Koh told attorneys for both sides that she had a hard time understanding the guidelines, and foreign media say jurors will find it even tougher to understand because they had less time to study.

On its design patent, Apple claims Samsung committed infringement citing similarity of products. Samsung says it should be judged by consumers since they could have purchased it believing it was an Apple product.

The Korean tech giant is speculating on if the jurors can make the proper judgment on a legal basis on such a delicate situation.

Worse, the jurors are mere outsiders and not IT experts. For a prejudice-free verdict, the San Jose court selected nine jurors unrelated to either company, have little IT knowledge, and who have no friends who are IT experts. The jury is comprised of electrical engineers, social workers, housewives and the unemployed.

The jurors must also sift through a vast volume of documents. Apple filed suit against Samsung, saying the Korean company infringed on three of its function patents and four design patents. Samsung countered by saying Apple violated five utility patents for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Even if the jurors understand all of the patents, they must also decide if the patents of both companies are valid and whether they infringed on each other`s patents. Another challenge is calculation of the accumulated losses from patent infringement, which could range up to billions of U.S. dollars.

○ Delayed verdict possible

The verdict in the first trial could be delayed. The final hearing of the first trial started at 9 a.m. Tuesday U.S. time. Education of the verdict procedure will be done in the morning and the closing arguments by both companies will go on for two hours each in the afternoon. The process will then end with the judge presenting the verdict schedule.

U.S. legal experts expect the verdict to be announced Thursday since the jurors need time for examination. Even if they reach a verdict, both companies could raise questions, and thus the Justice Department must decide whether to reject this or allow jurors to proceed with further discussion.

○ Koh: Apple destroyed `unfavorable` evidence

U.S. legal sources say the lawsuit is a highly complex case that has attracted global attention. Both sides will suffer trauma after the jury reaches a verdict and the court makes its final judgment.

The court raised the possibility that Apple could have destroyed evidence favorable for Samsung, saying the former failed to carry out its duty to preserve proof.

Fortune magazine and the patent blog Force Patents said Monday that Koh sent documents to jurors saying both Samsung and Apple could have destroyed evidence favorable to Samsung, and to reflect this in their verdict.

witness@donga.com