Apple Outsider on the Trial

— 2 minute read

Apple v. Samsung has been an interesting trial to follow - see The Verge's excellent coverage for enough details to keep you busy for a day and a half.

The fact that Samsung's lawyers seem to be as inept as Samsung at arguing their case is both sad and hilarious:

On the topic of damages, Charles Arthur writes for the Guardian that when rebutting Apple’s $2+ billion figure:

Samsung argued that Apple, which was struggling to keep up with demand for the iPhone 4 from July to October of 2010, did not have the capacity to have delivered on those additional sales. “Apple couldn’t service its own customers with the iPhone 4, but it could service customers it didn’t have?” Samsung attorney Bill Price asked…

This took my breath away. Here’s an opportunity to say “These people chose to buy Samsung instead of Apple. We are clearly bringing something to the table,” but instead, Price concedes “These people settled for Samsung because they couldn’t have found an iPhone anyway.” (Samsung may well know this for a fact because it’s supplying many of the components Apple needs to satisfy customer demand; see “having Apple’s number” above.) It was extremely shortsighted.