Apple suggests Samsung will use "Devil made me do it" defense
In the second half of Apple's opening statement in the United States-based court case that's having the computer giant face off against rival company Samsung, Apple's lead attorney Harold McElhinny suggested he knew what Samsung would be bringing to the table. One of the main items Samsung will speak about, McElhinny suggested this morning, is that Apple's design patents represent the only way to make functional products. He noted, "I think of this as the 'Devil made me do it defense'", according to Ina Fried of AllThingsD sitting in on the case.
In these opening arguments for Apple, they listed all of the patents at hand, one of them being the rubber-band scrolling or "bounce back" feature that users work with in iOS for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Earlier in the set of this morning's statements, McElhinny suggested that Samsung literally spoke about this feature early on in the design process of the device and decided to copy it for themselves with their Galaxy S line of smartphones.
McElhinny went on to speak about several double-tap to zoom patents and a patent which distinguishes between one and two finger scrolling and zooming. McElhinny noted as he went through these patents, once again, that he believed Samsung would soon describe each of them as trivial innovations in their own right. He went on to note that these items also supposedly came up in Samsung's customer surveys as important to the success of the iPhone, appearing then soon after on the Galaxy S line of smartphones.
One of the more important battles Apple will be fighting in this case is the "trade dress infringement" they've claimed against Samsung. McElhinny contends that it is the following, amongst other features, that make people recognize a product as an Apple device:
• Metallic bezel around a flat clear surface
• Rectangular product with four evenly rounded corners
• Narrow black borders at the sides
• Larger Bezels at top and bottom of product's front face
• Icon rows including dock at bottom of icons that doesn't change
Also according to Ina Fried, McElhinny suggested that whenever a customer looks at a product with these characteristics, they think they are looking at an Apple product.
McElhinny reiterated the numbers we'd heard before on how much Apple believes Samsung has damaged them for in this whole process. He suggested that Samsung has sold 22.7 million infringing phones and tablets, this resulting in $8.16 billion dollars in revenue for Samsung and taking away $2 billion in profit from Apple.
Keep an ear to SlashGear as we continue to cover the case as it expands upon us with great fury over the next few weeks. We'll see more from both Apple and Samsung as they let the court know what they feel they are owed in the long run and in the very, very short run if one wins over the other in a massive way – we shall see!