Jury set in Apple vs Samsung court row

The multi-billion pound patent trial involving the world's biggest smartphone companies, Apple and Samsung, is about to go to a US jury in an epic struggle over the wildly popular iPhone.

Apple argues that Samsung should pay 2.5 billion dollars (£1.6 billion) for ripping off its iPhone and iPad technology when it marketed competing devices.

During closing arguments, a lawyer for Apple said Samsung was having a "crisis of design" after the iPhone launch, and its executives were determined to illegally cash in on its success. Samsung's lawyer said the South Korean company was simply and legally giving consumers what they want: Smart phones with big screens.

Samsung has sold 22.7 million smartphones and tablets using "infringed" Apple technology since June 2010.

Apple's lead lawyer, Harold McElhinny, told jurors: "The damages in this case should be large because the infringement has been massive."

Samsung's counter claim seeks 399 million dollars (£252 million) from Apple for allegedly using Samsung technology in making the iPhone and iPad.

Apple and Samsung combined account for more than half of global smartphone sales. Apple is also demanding that Samsung remove its most popular phones and computer tablets from the US market.

"Apple is asking what it is not entitled to," Samsung's lawyer Charles Verhoeven said during his closing arguments. "Rather than competing in the marketplace, Apple is seeking an edge in the courtroom."

He argued that the state of technology has led most phone makers to design simple-to-use products with large, rounded rectangular faces. He conceded that Apple makes great products but said it does not have a monopoly on the design it claims it created.

"There is nothing nefarious about this, it's the way technology has evolved," he said.

From the beginning, legal experts and Wall Street analysts have viewed Samsung as the underdog. Apple's headquarters is near the court, and jurors were picked from the heart of Silicon Valley, where the company's late founder Steve Jobs is a revered technological pioneer.

While the legal and technological issues may be complex, patent expert Alexander I. Poltorak said the case will likely come down to whether jurors believe Samsung's products at issue look and feel almost identical to Apple's iPhone and iPad.

In June, US District Judge Lucy Koh called Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer "virtually indistinguishable" from Apple's iPad and banned its sale in the United States until the resolution of the case.

Samsung's battalion of lawyers has been arguing that many of Apple's claims of innovation are either obvious ideas or were actually stolen ideas from Sony and others. Experts called that line of argument a high-risk strategy because of Apple's reputation as an innovator.

The US trial is just the latest skirmish between the two over product designs. The two companies have been fighting in courts in Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

The case is one of some 50 lawsuits among myriad telecommunications companies jockeying for position in the burgeoning market for smartphones and computer tablets.

AP