Apple-Samsung juror reveals how jury made up its mind

A juror in the Apple vs Samsung trial has spoken exclusively to our sister site CNET News. He's spilled the beans on how the jury decided Samsung had infringed Apple's patents, and how it came to award the Cupertino company more than $1bn.

There were several "heated" debates, according to juror Manuel Ilagan. He says nothing was rushed, despite the jury coming to their conclusion in just 21 hours of deliberations, and he says they carefully considered all the evidence.

"We found for Apple because of the evidence they presented," Ilagan said. "It was clear there was infringement."

So what pieces of evidence helped them come to this conclusion?

"Well there were several," Ilagan said. "The emails that went back and forth from Samsung execs about the Apple features that they should incorporate into their devices was pretty damning to me. And also, on the last day, [Apple] showed the pictures of the phones that Samsung made before the iPhone came out and ones that they made after the iPhone came out.

"Some of the Samsung executives they presented on video from Korea -- I thought they were dodging the questions. They didn't answer one of them. They didn't help their cause."

Samsung didn't win a penny of its asked-for $421m damages. But Ilagan said it wasn't clear until after the first day of deliberations that the jurors were in agreement.

The bounce-back and pinch-to-zoom patents proved particularly tricky topics to debate. But the deliberation process sped up once they agreed Samsung had infringed Apple's patents.

"Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents, it's easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products, because it was all the same," Ilagan said. "Like the trade dress -- once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flat screen with the bezel... then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel. But we took our time. We didn't rush. We had a debate before we made a decision. Sometimes it was getting heated."

He also denied there was any hometown bias for the California-based Apple. And he was clear the jury knew the ramifications their decision could cause.

"I realised that's a big deal if Samsung can't sell those phones," he said. "But I'm sure Samsung can recover and do their own designs. There are other ways to design a phone. What was happening was that the appearance [of Samsung's phone] was their downfall. You copied the appearance... Nokia is still selling phones. BlackBerry is selling phones. Those phones aren't infringing. There are alternatives out there."

It's been a controversial case from the off. What do you reckon of the outcome? Is it right, or a loss for the consumer? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.