Watch Out Google!!

The jury deciding the patent infringement lawsuit between the two tech giants seems to be focused on Steve Jobs’ comments, being concerned about what the Apple founder meant when he decided to sue Samsung and whether he also wanted to pursue Google.

The jury apparently wants to know what Steve Jobs said when he decided to prosecute a case against Samsung – in particular, whether Google was mentioned or included in that directive. It is known that Google is responsible for much of the Android software code being fought over, but for some reason the company wasn’t named by Apple in its lawsuit. This is what Samsung had used in its defense, claiming that it was Google who developed the software in question.

In addition, the jury also asked how Apple chose the 5 patents to pursue against Samsung, how Samsung chose the 2 patents to launch its counter case, and what Samsung’s top executive think of the case launched by Apple. However, the jurors discovered that the answers to such questions fell outside of the information the parties can provide.

Samsung’s attorneys wanted the jurors to refer to a Steve Jobs 2010 memo where he called for a “holy war” against Android, while Apple attorneys argued that the document couldn’t answer the question of what Jobs said at the time the decision was made to sue Samsung.

The US District Court Judge agreed and answered all of the questions asked with the same answer: “You have all the evidence available to you and you need to make your decision based on what you have at the moment”. In other words, the jury seems to be thinking that Samsung might have been caught in an anti-competitive proxy fight between the other two giants. This is no good news for Apple, as the company hoped to put the fear of Jobs into Google’s suppliers to make them too frightened to use Android, or force them to pay a lot of money to Apple to use it.