Apple seeks judicial sanctions against Samsung over evidence disclosure News
Apple seeks judicial sanctions against Samsung over evidence disclosure
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[JURIST] Apple [corporate website] filed a motion in the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] on Wednesday requesting that the court sanction Samsung Electronics [corporate website] by ruling in Apple’s favor in the ongoing patent litigation between the two companies. Apple filed the motion with Judge Lucy Koh, accusing Samsung of “litigation misconduct” [Bloomberg report] after Samsung publicly released evidence that Koh had explicitly excluded from trial. Koh had barred Samsung from presenting images of an in-development smartphone from 2006 because the evidence was not disclosed in a timely manner in Samsung’s patent infringement arguments. Samsung then emailed the excluded evidence to reporters later that day. Apple contends that the release was designed to convey to jurors, through the media, arguments rebutting Apple’s central allegations that Samsung copied the iPhone and iPad. Apple is seeking $2.5 billion for its claims that Samsung infringed patents covering designs and technology for the mobile devices. In June Koh issued an injunction against Samsung blocking the sale of the Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer while the patent infringement case is litigated. The trial began earlier this week.

Also this week Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University [university website] filed a patent lawsuit against Apple in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas [official website], that Apple infringed upon two of the university’s voice-to-text technology patents issued in 2007 and 2010 when Apple used Siri [materials] in its iPhones and future iPads. Last week the Federal Court of Australia [official website] began hearing [JURIST report] two patent infringement cases brought by Apple and Samsung Electronics. Also last week the German Oberlandesgericht Duesseldorf [official website, in German] court upheld a lower court decision that rejected a request by Apple [JURIST report] to nationally ban the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 N. Apple filed a suit [JURIST report] against Samsung in April of last year alleging that Samsung committed ten patent infringements, two trademark violations and two trade dress violations by copying iPhone and iPad technology in making its Galaxy products.