A lawyer for Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) told a jury that Samsung Electronics Co. decided it would rather copy the iPhone maker’s technology than “beat Apple fairly in the marketplace.”
“As we all know it’s easier to copy than to innovate,” Harold McElhinny, Apple’s lawyer, said today during his opening statement at a trial in federal court in San Jose, California.
McElhinny showed jurors a slide of Samsung’s mobile phones from 2006 with squared corners, and another of its phones from 2010 with rounded edges. Samsung arrived at the newer design only after Apple founder Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, the lawyer said.
Jurors will decide each company’s claims that its rival infringed patents covering designs and technology for mobile devices, with potential damage awards reaching billions of dollars.
The case is the first U.S. jury trial of a battle being fought on four continents for dominance of a mobile-device market that Bloomberg Industries said was $312 billion last year.
The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 11- cv-01846, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
The jury is the first in the U.S. to hear lawyers’ arguments and evidence in the global dispute over smartphone technology.
The panel selected Monday include a man who filed for his own technology patents, a woman who worked for a semiconductor company, and an aspiring software engineer.
While the interests and professional backgrounds of those jurors reflect the Silicon Valley pool from which the panel was drawn, another juror didn’t go to college and works in construction. A Google Inc. engineer who Apple fought to get removed early in the selection process over the objections of U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, was eliminated in the final cut.
The seven men and three women are scheduled to hear opening arguments today in a trial that is part of a battle being fought on four continents for dominance of a mobile-device market that Bloomberg Industries said was $312 billion last year.
Apple, the iPhone maker based in Cupertino, California, seeks $2.5 billion for its claims that Samsung infringed patents covering designs and technology for mobile devices. Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, countersued and will present claims that Apple is infringing two patents covering mobile-technology standards and three utility patents. Samsung is demanding royalties of as much as 2.4 percent for each device sold, according to a court filing.
