I am not suggesting the Judge or the jury are biased. I am saying that they did a poor job.
I can agree with your reasoning. However, look at the thread, there are a lot of people who are not just suggesting bias, but outright saying the judge and jury is biased. Not everyone, but certainly some very vocal voices saying it.
Yes Samsung's lawyers were late with a very important piece of evidence and the system you have in place means that it cannot be shown but the problem with that is you do not see the whole picture so how can the jury possible come to a fair conclusion when they have incomplete data?
Agree with it or not, there has to be some limitations or it'd be more of a circus than it already is as evidenced by the judge asking if Apple's lawyers were smoking crack saying they had 20 more witnesses. Hell, we'd still be in the discovery phase and likely would be until the end of the year.
What should have happened is this. 1) The judge should have allowed the evidence,
See above response. There has to be reasonable limitations in any court case and part of that is limiting the time frame for certain parts of the lawsuit process. One of the checks and balances is that Samsung can appeal the decision and present said new evidence.
2) Apple should have been given time to look at the evidence,
I believe Samsung also had some evidence rejected specifically because they produced the evidence at the last minute and didn't give Apple enough time to look at it...
3) Samsung should have had the costs of this delay added to their bill (both Apples costs and the courts costs). Their lawyers made a mistake and Samsung should pay for it but with a case this important not allowing evidence on a technicality should only apply if it is not relevant to the case.
Again, Samsung's lawyers screwed up. They know what the rules in court are presumably. They're billing their client multiple hundreds of dollars per hour per person after all. Neither the court, the potential jury, nor Apple should have to pay for Samsung dragging their feet.
And again, Samsung can still appeal the decision. That's part of the checks and balances.
The jury also made mistakes. They talked about prior art but then skipped over it because it was taking them too long. That means they did not test validity and just assumed the patents were valid.
They made mistakes in awarding damages to devices they had said did not infringe. Now had they spent more time deliberating then these mistakes could be attributed to fatigue but in this case they were so quick it really makes you wonder how much thought they put into the the figures they were throwing around.
They ignored jury instruction 35 in part and 53 (they were the same because it was obviously important). It states that the damages should not punish the infringer but should just compensate the patent holder. The foreman admitted that they wanted the damages to be sufficiently high to be painful.
Agreed. This is probably the biggest reason, and not because of inadmissible evidence that Samsung is getting another shot at this. I was very very surprised at the quick decision. I wouldn't have expected any verdict until at least another week.
Finally the foreman holds patents that are just as vague and also have examples of prior art so surely this must be a conflict of interest. If Apple win it strengthens his defence should his patents get attacked.
Actually no. Unless you can prove he is specifically biased for or against Apple or Samsung, there is no conflict of interest. His experience can actually make him a better jury member. The assumption would be that he can make a better informed decision on a patent case.
I know I posted this link before and someone else has also posted this link but it is well worth reading.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390. He backs up his analysis with sources and if you read his other articles he backs them up with court documents.
I do not think anybody was biased more than any individual is biased but I do think that mistakes were made throughout and it needs to be looked at.
My own feeling is the jury may have been hasty in their decision. It is a very valid argument in favor of them violating procedures.
As I've said, I think most of Apple's design UI patents should be thrown out but I still think Apple has a valid case in terms of Trade Dress. Too much evidence on that front and anyone who claims any shred of being unbiased can see that.