Apple And Samsung Lawyers Present Final Arguments To Jury

As the Apple-Samsung U.S. trial heads to the jury, the companies' lawyers made their concluding arguments to the jury, summing up the testimonies and evidences presented by both parties in the past three weeks.

The case is one of the most closely watched technology trial, with the entire future of smartphone and tablet industrial design lying in the hands of the jury.

Notable arguments made by Apple lawyers:

• "Apple took five years to bring this revolution to U.S; Samsung took three months to copy it. That's the truth and that's simple, clear, and not disputed."
• Google itself warned Samsung that the Galaxy S and the Galaxy Tab looked a lot like Apple's iOS devices.
• "No Samsung executives were willing to come here from Korea... Instead of witnesses, they brought you lawyers." Apple, meanwhile, made a number of top level execs including Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall available for testimony.
• "No Samsung witness ever sat in that chair and said 'those designs are not similar.'"
• Showing the Lumia, and an Xperia Arc, Apple's lawyers said "Not every smartphone needs to look like an iPhone."
• "Make no mistake about it: Apple wants to compete... Apple wants to compete fairly and squarely with inventions and innovations and products. Taking someone's intellectual property is not fair and square."

Samsung's notable arguments:

• "Rather than competing in the marketplace, Apple is seeking a competitive edge in the courtroom," Verhoeven said. "(Apple thinks) it's entitled to having a monopoly on a rounded rectangle with a large screen. It's amazing really."
• "It's not against the law to be inspired by your competition,"
• "Just think about walking into a Best Buy store. You go into the TV section. All of the TVs look the same. They're all boxes. They're all flatscreens. They're all minimalist designs." The same is true with phones. All black rectangles with touchscreens.
• "Is anyone really deceived by Samsung's devices that they were buying Apple devices? The fact is consumers make choices, not mistakes... there's no deception, there's no confusion, and Apple has no credible evidence of it."
• "There's only two icons that Dr. Kare [a former Apple designer] says were similar. The phone and clock... I would submit that the vast majority of the icons are substantially different. And let's not pretend you can patent a colorful row, a colorful matrix of icons."

Samsung, on its part, is also claiming that Apple infringes on three of its patents relating to how smartphones communicate.

The jury now has to reach a unanimous decision on the basis of all the evidence presented in the course of the past three weeks. The process is pretty detailed, requiring jury members to fill a 20 page form pointing out exactly which Samsung device infringes Apple's patents and vice versa.

Apple's seeking $2.5 billion in damages, while Samsung's demanding $500 million in its countersuit.

[via The Verge, Reuters]