Manuel Ilagan said the nine-person jury who heard the patent infringement case between Apple and Samsung knew after the first day that they believed Samsung had wronged Apple.
Ilagan told CNET in an exclusive interview that the jury had several sometimes "heated" debates before reaching their verdict yesterday. He said that nothing in the deliberation process was rushed and that the jury carefully weighed the evidence.
"We found for Apple because of the evidence they presented, Ilagan said. "It was clear there was infringement."
Asked to point to some of the more compelling evidence Ilagan said:
"Well, there were several. The e-mails that went back and forth from Samsung execs about the Apple features that they should incorporate into their devices was pretty damning to me. And also on the last day they showed the pictures of the phones that Samsung made before the iPhone came out and ones that they made after iPhone came out. Some of the Samsung executives they presented on video [testimony] from Korea, I thought they were dodging the questions. They didn't answer one of them. They didn't help their cause. "
Ilagan highlighted another area where Samsung lost the jury: its offensive on Apple that claimed Apple violated two of its patents relating to 3G wireless technology. One patent involved the baseband chip in the iPhone and iPad with 3G. During the trial, Apple turned around and pointed to a licensing deal Samsung had with Intel, who made the chips Apple used. Under that deal, Apple said Samsung was not able to sue any companies Intel sold to. Apple then presented the receipts from when it purchased the accused chips from Intel.
The jurors came to their decision in 21 hours or less than three work days. They ruled in favor of Apple on a majority of its patent infringement claims against Samsung. The jury also awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages.
Apple had originally sought $2.75 billion in damages. Though it wasn't unanimous on all counts, the verdict was a major victory for Apple's favor. Samsung, which asked for $421 million in its countersuit, did not convince the jury that Apple infringed on any of their patents and received nothing in damages.
The decision was very one sided but Ilagan said that it wasn't clear that the jurors were largely in agreement until after the first day of deliberations.
"It didn't dawn on us [that we agreed that Samsung had infringed] on the first day," Ilagan said. "We were debating heavily, especially about the patents on bounce back and pinch-to-zoom. Apple said they owned patents but we were debating about the prior art [about the same technology that Samsung said existed before the iPhone debuted]. [Velvin Hogan] was jury foreman. He had experience. He owned patents himself. In the beginning the debate was heated but it was still civil. Hogan holds patents so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there before Apple.
"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."
To those who are skeptical that the jury could reach a decision on more than 700 often complex patent questions, Ilagan said members of the jury took their job seriously and didn't take any short cuts.
"We weren't impatient," Ilagan said. "We wanted to do the right thing, and not skip any evidence. I think we were thorough."
Ilagan also said there was no hometown bias either.
"We weren't going for Apple," Ilagan said. "We were going by the judges instructions on how we should go about it and we stuck to that. We weren't thinking Apple or Samsung."
As far as the deliberation process was concerned, each of the jurors had some kind of expertise or played some roll that helped them the process go smoothly. Hogan, the jury's foreman owned a company that went through the lengthy process of obtaining a patent. He was also on a jury three prior times.
The two women on the jury, Luzviminda Rougieri and Aarti Mathur helped keep the discussion on track and within the rules, Ilagan said. One of the jurors, believed to be Peter Catherwood, is a project manager with AT&T and he was helpful in helping the group add up damages, Ilagan said.
"I was vocal about the technical [issues], about the power controls because I know that stuff," Ilagan said. "I work on that."
Ilagan has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and worked as a systems engineer for Western Electronic and and as an applications engineer for Stanford Telecom.
More to come
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