Apple-Samsung jury foreman: We all lost this one

Apple and Samsung are undoubtedly looking for a way to spin Friday’s mixed verdict as a victory. But the trial’s jury foreman says it wasn’t a case of picking a winner.

“It wasn’t a decision based on trying to send a message to one company or another,” Thomas Dunham, a retired IBM supervisor, told the San Jose Mercury News. “It was based on the evidence that was presented to us.”

The jury found that Samsung had infringed some Apple patents but not others. But instead of awarding Apple the $2 billion in damages it had asked for, it awarded just $119.6 million. (And that total stood, even after the court made some adjustments today.) It also awarded Samsung $158,400 for Apple’s infringement of a Samsung patent.

But if there was no clear winner, Dunham said, there was a loser: you and me.

“Ultimately, the consumer is the loser in all this,” Dunham told the Mercury News. “I’d like to see them find a way to settle. I hope this (verdict) in some way helps shape that future.”

The jury had a chance to play with the phones in question in order to compare their interfaces and how they worked. They also heard testimony about a deal Google had made to help defend Samsung against Android-related lawsuits from Apple.

“That woke us all up,” Dunham said. But the Apple-Google war was beyond the scope of this trial — so that battle will have to wait for another day.

via Ars Technica