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| Authored by: Ian Al on Thursday, September 13 2012 @ 03:57 AM EDT |
He said that the damages were set to deter other companies from infringing on
patents rather than punishing Samsung.
Judge Koh must already be asking herself where on earth in the jury instructions
he was asked to do that.
If the wilfulness tripling of damages to punitive levels is already nixed by the
inadequate jury form and the damages were not set by the jury according to the
actual damage as demanded by the instructions, I cannot see how the judge can be
sure that any part of the damages were set on the directed legal basis.
What can and should she do? None of the damages numbers are safe. Should she say
that she will evaluate where the jury got the numbers from and reduce the
damages to those explicitly supported by an actual damage argument?
I don't see how she can do that in the light of the foreman's statements about
'deterrents'. Even if she can see how the damages numbers fit the Apple theories
of actual damages, that is not how the jury came to a decision.
Even my long experience as a bar-room lawyer has failed me. I have no idea what
the right way out of this problem would be.
In the mean time, the media are still discussing what the effect on the market
of the injunctions and the $1B+ damages will be. Whatever happens, a lot of
their opinion pieces are about to be consigned to the dustbin... trash can...
recycling depot.
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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