A “Nantucket boat ride” happens when you hook into a whale and it tows your boat… This can be dangerous. It was for the jury. Their fearless leader had no idea what “prior art” meant and decided no prior art but Apple’s mattered…
"The software on the Apple side could not be placed into the processor on the prior art and vice versa. That means they are not interchangeable. That changed everything right there."
via Jury foreman says Apple patents valid due to different processor architecture | Hacker News.
Sigh… I cannot see any way that the judge will allow the findings of the jury to stand. That makes no sense at all. I could not understand it in the video.
see 2:53 onward for the part in question.
This foreman demonstrates colosal ignorance defeating common sense. Prior art is OS/CPU-independent. Patents are about function.
Later, the guy goes on to avoid the question of why he felt the need to punish Samsung rather than merely compensating Apple, compounding his error. The jury’s findings are nonsensical based on bias by the jurors, not evidence in the case. Later he grabbed numbers not in evidence to calculate the damage Apple had sustained.
He said he looked at the case from the viewpoint that the “patents were mine” in order to decide matters. What’s with that? This guy dragged the jury around by the nose.
see also GROKLAW – The Foreman’s Aha Moment in Apple v. Samsung Was Based on Misunderstanding Prior Art ~pj
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The jury’s findings are nonsensical based on bias by the jurors, not evidence in the case
That is the way the system works, Mr. Pogson. Rather than having the issues settled by experts who likely have biases of their own, such as you have, they take unbiased people who are essentially ignorant and then the lawyers try to convince them on each side as to the way the facts, such as they are, should be viewed in light of the law, such as the judge explains and the jurors understand.
The process is not likely to result in a technically correct outcome in most cases and it is almost certain the the jurors are going to be swayed by completely specious information. You probably cheer when Microsoft is clobbered by a jury judgement against them, such as the billion dollar loss over using subroutines in a browser to process special file types or the algorithm used by Stac vs the one used by Microsoft, both companies having purchased rights to patents granted to others. Then you moan when the coin toss falls the other way. You have to learn to take the sweet with the sour, I think.
A better way certainly exists and would get rid of the patent annoyances that dominate today’s technologies, but you have to figure that the lawmakers are mostly lawyers and changing the system is mostly based on how their current system is flawed and that is not the way that they see it. Sounds sort of hopeless to me.
BTW, it is Nantucket “sleighride“. The boat ride is more of a tour of the harbor.
There was another option, the jury could have nullified and acquitted, ending the entire mess “dismissal with prejudice”.
This foreman demonstrates colosal ignorance defeating common sense.
Because Samsung clearly wasn’t selling iPhone and iPad clones.