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Exclusive: Apple-Samsung juror speaks out

Manuel Ilagan, one of the nine jurors who ruled in favor of Apple, tells CNET he thought Samsung's internal e-mails about incorporating some of Apple's technology into its devices, and the evasive way Samsung executives answered questions, was damning.


(Credit: Vicki Behringer)
Apple v. Samsung juror Manuel Ilagan said the nine-person jury that heard the patent infringement case between the companies knew after the first day that it believed Samsung had wronged Apple.

Ilagan told CNET in an exclusive interview that the jury had several sometimes "heated" debates before reaching its verdict yesterday. He also said 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 the iPhone came out. Some of the Samsung executives they presented on video 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, which 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 Apple. Samsung, which asked for $421 million in its countersuit, didn't convince the jury that Apple infringed on any of its patents and received nothing in damages.

The decision was very one-sided, but Ilagan said it wasn't clear the jurors were largely in agreement until after the first day of deliberations.

"It didn't dawn on us 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 . 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 a 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 so quickly on more than 700 often complex patent questions, Ilagan said members of the jury took their job seriously and didn't take any shortcuts.

"We weren't impatient," Ilagan said. "We wanted to do the right thing, and not skip any evidence. I think we were thorough."

The deliberation process moved faster once all the jury members had agreed that Apple's patents were infringed.

"Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents," Ilagan said, "it's easy to just go down those different products because it was all the same. Like the trade dress, once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flatscreen with the Bezel...then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel. But we took our time. We didn't rush. We had a debate before we made a decision. Sometimes it was getting heated."

A bezel is a term analogous with the non-functional area around a digital screen, also refers to an ornamental band around the front face. In Apple's first iPhone was polished chrome, a look that stayed with it for three generations until the iPhone 4.

During the trial, Samsung attempted to undercut the importance of the bezel. That included bringing out one of its design experts to say that the feature was functional, and therefore dictated form -- a part of Samsung's argument that jurors appear to have actually bought based on what was a very mixed ruling of infringement on the patent that covers the look of that feature.

As far as the criticism that Ilagan also said there was no hometown bias.

"We weren't going for Apple," Ilagan said. "We were going by the judge's 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 role that helped 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 helped the group add up damages, Ilagan said.

Complete coverage: Apple v. Samsung, a battle over billions
"I was vocal about the technical , 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 as an applications engineer for Stanford Telecom.

Four of the nine jury members, which all lived in the area around San Jose, Calif., where the trial was held, had experience working for technology companies, including Intel and AT&T. Hogan worked for a hard-drive company.