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Samsung: Apple blinded jurors with ‘appeals to racial prejudice’

Published Dec 17th, 2013 11:15AM EST
Samsung Apple Retrial Requested

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Sure, Samsung has now seen two juries slap it with gigantic penalties for allegedly infringing upon Apple’s patents. That isn’t stopping the company from hoping that a third jury might somehow let it off easy, however. FOSS Patents points out that Samsung is now asking Judge Lucy Koh to grant it a retrial of its last retrial and that it’s once again claiming that Apple only won its last jury award through seedy, underhanded tactics.

Among other things, Samsung’s attorneys are claiming that jurors in the latest patent trial were unduly influenced by the Apple legal team’s alleged race-baiting that occurred when they compared Samsung to the Asian vendors that put several American TV manufacturers into bankruptcy by flooding the market with low-cost copycat television sets.

“Samsung respectfully requests a new trial based on Apple’s repeated references to Samsung’s revenues from all infringing products, as opposed to those found to infringe upon Apple’s design patents, and blatant appeals to racial, ethnic and national prejudice,” Samsung’s attorneys write. “Throughout the trial, Apple portrayed Samsung as a foreign threat to the local and national economy… Apple’s cynical appeal to racial, ethnic and national sentiment has no place in our system of justice and warrants a new trial.”

FOSS Patents doesn’t think that Koh will go along with this argument and says that Samsung “presumably brought this motion only to preserve its record for the appeal.” That said, FOSS Patents doesn’t think this case is over by a long shot and believes that “it’s not unimaginable that Samsung might even try to appeal this issue to the Supreme Court.”

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.