Apple-Samsung juror: ‘I could defend this if it was my patent.’

The foreman of the jury in the Apple-Samsung trial spoke out Monday about how his own patents informed his take on the trial.

Velvin Hogan appeared on Bloomberg Television today for an interview with Emily Chang that covered the decision-making process, the Apple and Samsung lawyers’ approaches, on the damages, and on his own experience with patent law.

“For me, it was always interesting because of my technology background,” Hogan said of the trial. “We were inundated with evidence and people trying to bias our opinion on both sides. But when we went into the jury room, we were determined to set all that aside and focused right on the evidence.”

Hogan led the jury that decided overwhelmingly in favor of Apple on August 24, in a hotly contested patent battle that pitted two electronics giants against each other. Apple claimed that numerous Samsung devices violated seven of its own patents relating to the iPhone and iPad, while Samsung claimed that Apple was violating five of Samsung’s patents relating to wireless technologies and other aspects of cellphone functionality.

After considering the patents carefully, Hogan said he had an “a ha” moment when he realized that the so-called 460 patent was, in his opinion, defensible. “I decided that I could defend this, if it was my patent,” he said. He explained his thinking to the rest of the jury, and from that point on, their decision-making went relatively quickly.

Confusingly, the 460 patent is Samsung‘s patent on a “method of transmitting emails, with and without embedded images, from mobile phone with built-in camera.” Apple did not convince the jury that this patent, along with Samsung’s other patents, were invalid, but it did find that Apple had not infringed those patents.

Interestingly, Hogan himself owns no Apple products — and no one on the jury was an iPhone user. So don’t go accusing him of being an Apple fanboy, because he’s just about the opposite of that.

“In fact, I own no Apple equipment, and intentionally not for a number of years. I am a PC person,” Hogan said. He later added, “my wife has a Samsung phone, but it is not a smart phone.”

See below for the 10-minute video, courtesy of Bloomberg.

Source: Bloomberg News