Apple doesn't want jurors to see Samsung logo at trial
Obscuring Samsung's logo from the court's video equipment is just one of the requests to be made by Apple for the upcoming patent trial between the rivals, a report says. Samsung has its own requests as well.
Apple doesn't want jurors to see Samsung's logo on court video equipment, which is just one of many courtroom requests the two companies have made as they prepare to take their patent issues to trial.
With the upcoming jury trial currently set for July 30, the two have already revealed the issues they plan to raise ahead of their courtroom showdown, according to Foss Patents' Florian Mueller.
Apple's intention to file a motion to obscure the Samsung logo on the court's video displays may seem "funny," says Mueller. But Apple doesn't want to create an impression among jurors that Samsung equipment and the company itself are somehow favored by the court.
Apple also wants to ban any statements attributed to Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, author of the recent biography about the late Apple leader. As Mueller points out, Apple clearly does not want jurors to hear Jobs' comments about destroying Android because it's a stolen product and going thermonuclear war about it.
Further, Apple doesn't want any references to Foxconn or working conditions in China to enter into the trial, Mueller says. Of course, the situation in China has little relevance to the claims to be made at the trial, so this may be a non-issue.
Samsung naturally has its own laundry list of requests, according to Mueller.
The Korean mobile phone maker wants to exclude "Apple-related blogs and articles by non-expert newspaper reporters, regarding any assessment of Apple and Samsung and/or their products."
It also wants to eliminate any testimony from Henry Urbach, "Apple's expert on the alleged cultural significance of Apple." Samsung believes Urbach's own opinions about Apple products are subjective and therefore "not helpful to the jury."
Finally, Samsung also wants to keep out the opinions of Sanjay Sood, "Apple's expert on consumer decision making," who it considers an unobjective and unhelpful source about Apple's design prowess.
At this stage, these are all just motions the companies plan to file. It will be up to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to decide which ones have merit and which ones should be dismissed.