July 31, 2012 - Yesterday ten jurors were chosen to hear the much-awaited trial between Apple and Samsung. The patent infringement lawsuit centers on Samsung's alleged infringement of at least 17 patents related to the iPad and other Apple products, and Apple's alleged infringement of five Samsung patents.
The seven men and three women on the jury include an insurance agent, a video game enthusiast, a store manager, a systems engineer and a benefits and payroll manager for startup businesses - but no one with connections to Apple, Samsung, Google or Motorola Mobility. With both Apple and Google headquartered just miles from the courthouse where the trial will take place, Judge Lucy Koh took hours to carefully question prospective jurors about their biases toward or against the litigants. A Google employee and an Apple employee were ruled out as jurors, as was a man who owns 120 technology patents, and other patent holders.
And last week, a judge ordered that the jury in the case hear that Samsung continued to delete emails after the lawsuit was filed in August 2010, rather than retaining them as it was required to do by law for the discovery phase of the trial. Samsung's mySingle email system automatically deletes emails unless an employee chooses to save them, so mySingle users produced very few emails during discovery while Microsoft Outlook users produced thousands of emails for the same period.
Samsung claims that it advised its employees to start saving emails in 2010 after Apple filed the suit, but didn't follow up or provide training until 2011.
The trial is expected to last four weeks.