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Judge rejects Apple's calls for Samsung censure

Schiller takes stand to defend iPad

Apple's demand that Samsung be censured for releasing evidence that had been struck out of the two companies' patent battle has been rejected by the presiding judge.

Apple had asked Judge Lucy Koh to sanction the lawyers involved in Samsung's decision to send evidence that had been filed too late for the trial proceedings to some members of the press, or else to rule in favor of Cupertino for the whole case – something to which Samsung objected.

Judge Koh was scathing about Samsung's conduct, but after interviewing jury members on an individual basis to see how they had been affected by the leaked information, declined to take further action.

"Those remedies are not warranted by the current record," the San Jose Mercury News reports her as saying. "I will not let any theatrics or sideshow distract us from what we are here to do."

While four jurors said they had seen the reports, this wasn't seen as a problem. Koh asked them to refrain from reading about the case, promising them all a scrapbook of coverage after the trial ends.

In a busy day's testimony, Apple's marketing boss Phil Schiller took to the stand to defend his company's right to own such design features as a tablet with rounded corners. Apple has spent $647m on advertising the iPhone around the world since 2008, he said, plus $457m on iPad, and Samsung's design thefts had hurt Cupertino's bottom line.

"I was pretty shocked at the appearance of the Galaxy S phone and the extent to which it copied (Apple products,)" Schiller said.

Apple lost out not just on iPhone and iPad sales, but also on its other lines, Schiller said. Apple's research showed that iPhone users were more likely to buy other Apple hardware in future, and this amounted to a lot of lost sales. "I absolutely believe it's had an impact on our sales," he said.

The company also took a considerable risk with products like the iPad, which launched into a sector that was considered moribund by many in the industry, he explained. When he saw the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Schiller said, he grew concerned that Samsung was going to copy Apple's entire product line.

Scott Forstall, Apple's senior vice president of iOS, also took the stand on Friday, recounting how Apple engineers had been recruited to work on the iPhone, then dubbed Project Purple, under strict terms of secrecy. They were isolated on the Apple campus to avoid news leaking out, and the door was marked with a sign reading "Fight Club" to remind people to be quiet, he said.

He did acknowledge that Apple bought phones from the competition and analyzed them, but said this was largely to sort out how to design antennas and avoid dropped calls. ®

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