In fact, I'll do that first, because the media reported that the jury barely could stay awake this day. The judge even offered them coffee. But to me, this day is fascinating. I'll try to show you why. And you'll see some of the finest lawyering you could ever hope to watch play out before your very eyes.

The irony is that two of the experts testified this day about how Samsung allegedly infringed Apple's '915 and '381 patents, both of which have since been preliminarily ruled by the USPTO as invalid, the '915 patent just this past week, the '381 patent a bit earlier. But this is a trial transcript from August, and no one knew that was going to happen. One can't help but wonder though, how could experts not know whether there is prior art that seems to invalidate a patent?

2203 - Filed & Entered: 12/20/2012
NOTICE OF APPEAL to the Federal Circuit as to [2197] Order by Apple Inc.. Filing fee $ 455, receipt number 0971-7360492. Appeal Record due by 1/22/2013. (Selwyn, Mark) (Filed on 12/20/2012)

2202 - Filed & Entered: 12/19/2012
STATEMENT OF RECENT DECISION pursuant to Civil Local Rule 7-3.d filed bySamsung Electronics America, Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC. (Attachments: # (1) Exhibit A)(Maroulis, Victoria) (Filed on 12/19/2012)

Most Holy *Invalid* Patent, I should say.

The best part on the injunction denial is the judge totally rejected Apple's design patents theory:

However, Apple’s evidence does not establish that any of Apple’s three design patents covers a particular feature that actually drives consumer demand. ...First, though more specific than the general “design” allegations, they are still not specific enough to clearly identify actual patented designs. Instead, they refer to such isolated characteristics as glossiness, reinforced glass, black color, metal edges, and reflective screen. Id. Apple does not have a patent on, for example, glossiness, or on black color.

The phones at issue in this case contain a broad range of features, only a small fraction of which are covered by Apple’s patents. Though Apple does have some interest in retaining certain features as exclusive to Apple, it does not follow that entire products must be forever banned from the market because they incorporate, among their myriad features, a few narrow protected functions. Especially given the lack of causal nexus, the fact that none of the patented features is core to the functionality of the accused products makes an injunction particularly inappropriate here....

Weighing all of the factors, the Court concludes that the principles of equity do not support the issuance of an injunction here. First and most importantly, Apple has not been able to link the harms it has suffered to Samsung’s infringement of any of Apple’s six utility and design patents that the jury found infringed by Samsung products in this case.

It would not be equitable to deprive consumers of Samsung’s infringing phones when, as explained above, only limited features of the phones have been found to infringe any of Apple’s intellectual property. Though the phones do contain infringing features, they contain a far greater number of non-infringing features to which consumers would no longer have access if this Court were to issue an injunction. The public interest does not support removing phones from the market when the infringing components constitute such limited parts of complex, multi-featured products.

That would be on Day 1 [PDF] some pretrial issues discussed, such as evidentiary issues like whether an email can be used and what the lawyers can and can't say or use as slides in their opening statements. They call such things demonstratives. Then voir dire begins on page 41, then the judge giving the jury the preliminary instructions. One of the first things she tells them is this:

And what we're doing this morning is a process of jury selection, which means that both sides are entitled to have a fair and impartial jury. What that means is that whoever is selected as a juror would ultimately make decisions based solely on the evidence that's admitted during the trial and apply the law only as I instruct you.

On Day 2 [PDF], we have the plaintiff's opening statement. Note the famous "What's the point?" of having a trial question happens beginning on page 8.

Finally, on Day 3 [PDF], the plaintiff's opening statement continues, then the incident of a group visiting the courtroom is handled, on page 6, beginning on line 18, with the transcript erroneously, I believe, identifying the speaker as Michael Jacobs rather than the judge, the Hon. Lucy Koh. And then Apple begins to present its case, putting on the stand Phil Schiller, then Scott Forstall, and finally Justin Denison.

For Mr. Schiller, the lawyers were Harold J. McElhinny of Morrison & Foerster for Apple and William C. Price of Quinn Emanuel for Samsung. For Scott Forstall, it was Mr. McElhinny for Apple and Kevin P.B. Johnson of Quinn Emanuel for Samsung. For Denison, it was William F. Lee of Wilmer Hale for Apple, and John B. Quinn of Quinn Emanuel for Samsung.

Enjoy!

The jury ruled [PDF] in August at trial that Apple did not infringe Samsung's patents, so there isn't any relief she needs to provide, as these issues Apple raised were defenses to infringement:

Because the Court finds that these defenses cannot affect the outcome of the present case in light of the jury’s finding of noninfringement, the Court, in its discretion, will not consider these defenses at this time.

Here's the precise relief Apple had asked for:

Apple respectfully requests that the Court exercise its equitable powers to find that Samsung has engaged in waiver, equitable estoppel, unclean hands, and unfair competition. Moreover, Apple asks the Court to hold Samsung’s ’516 and ’941 patents unenforceable against all UMTS-compliant products, including those sold by Apple.

On December 4, 2012 – two days before the Court’s scheduled hearing on post-trial motions in this case – Samsung filed an administrative request for leave to file a supplemental declaration of Stephen Gray in support of Samsung’s opposition to Apple’s motion for a permanent injunction (“Request”). ECF No. 2183-1.

Less than 17 hours before the scheduled hearing on Apple’s motion for a permanent injunction, Samsung seeks leave to file a supplemental expert declaration to respond to a reply declaration filed on November 9, 2012 – almost a month ago.

Judge Koh has also ruled on the various requests for sealing. For Samsung, it's two granted, including the HTC one, and another which asks for something Apple asked for too and four denied, with one partly granted; for Apple it's 2 granted and 1 partially granted. It's been like that every time I check who gets the most motions denied.

As for HTC's desire, seconded by Samsung, to more fully redact HTC's license agreement with Apple, she has granted that motion.

The Samba Team is proud to announce the release of Samba 4.0, a major new release of the award-winning Free Software file, print and authentication server suite for Microsoft Windows® clients.

As the culmination of ten years' work, the Samba Team has created the first compatible Free Software implementation of Microsoft’s Active Directory protocols. Familiar to all network administrators, the Active Directory protocols are the heart of modern directory service implementations.

Samba 4.0 comprises an LDAP directory server, Heimdal Kerberos authentication server, a secure Dynamic DNS server, and implementations of all necessary remote procedure calls for Active Directory. Samba 4.0 provides everything needed to serve as an Active Directory Compatible Domain Controller for all versions of Microsoft Windows clients currently supported by Microsoft, including the recently released Windows 8.

The Samba 4.0 Active Directory Compatible Server provides support for features such as Group Policy, Roaming Profiles, Windows Administration tools and integrates with Microsoft Exchange and Free Software compatible services such as OpenChange.

The Samba 4.0 Active Directory Compatible Server can also be joined to an existing Microsoft Active Directory domain, and Microsoft Active Directory Domain Controllers can be joined to a Samba 4.0 Active Directory Compatible Server, showing true peer-to-peer interoperability of the Microsoft and Samba implementations of the Active Directory protocols.

Samba is one of 11 open source projects that leading software integrity vendor Coverity has certified as "secure" and has reached Coverity "Integrity Rung 2" certification. What I like the best about the Samba team is that it's proven to be a no-sellout zone. "If you want to become a member of the team then the first thing you should do is join the samba-technical mailing list and start contributing to the development of Samba," it says on the site.

This is FOSS history, so it belongs right here in our archives. I lived that whole Samba-Microsoft saga, and it feels so right to see it bear such fruit. It's what courts are for, and it's why I am very grateful to the EU Commission, the Samba guys for not wimping out when everyone else did, and to the lawyers, especially Carlo Piana and Eben Moglen, for making it happen.