Out of the courtoom, her rulings have as much force as mine.

I suppose you've never heard of contempt of court, but don't worry, you're not alone, the average Slashdot poster is quite ignorant.

The fun thing is those who oppose vehemently to "rounded rectangle" can't give coherent answer what it is about, then, and proceed with "it's about copying the combination of design features" handwave maneuver without ever saying any concrete detail about what else this suit is about.

That's because there really is no concrete detail about it. Trade dress is extremely subjective and based on what the average person may confuse.

So yeah, those who take "rounded rectangles" as literal are dumb, but those who don't see the figurative sense of "rounded corners" (it's also about "a display of a grid of colorful square icons with uniformly rounded corners", y'all) are dumb as well.

The latter group recognizes the legal validity of design patents and trade dress, the former does not. Dumb or not, the latter group at least has some logical ground.

The jury is not supposed to view evidence or information about the trial unless presented within the bounds defined by the judge. You are implying that the actions Samsung took could cause the jury to change their decision but for them to do so they would have to have already violated the judges own rules thereby imperiling the case.

Samsung has violated those rules, they brought up the subject in the courtroom.

1) the jury has already been picked and instructed to not read any news reports on this material, so releasing it now can't affect the jury. If you can't rely on the jury to follow instructions, then the process is broken anyhow.

Indeed, broken by Samsung's contempt of court...

2) the material itself was already public before Samsung released it. they just pointed out which publicly-available material the judge wouldn't let in

After the jurors were selected based on not being informed about the case, so if they learn about that "evidence" now, it's news to them.

3) the judge herself said that this trial should be as open as possible, hence the material being available to the public in the first place

An open trial only means that the public can assist it, not the public can have access to all the information related to it.

4) the judge did not instruct that this material could not be released so it's not like the lawyers were disobeying orders

Though as a lawyer you are still a legal officer and should make sure that everything goes according to the established legal proceedings. Running to the media and making it hard for the jurors to avoid learning about your inadmissible evidence while questioning the Judge's partiality is not the way to go about it.

IANAL, but it seems that Samsung outmaneuvered the judge on this one.

To me it seems more like they're doing Apple a really good service.

I still can't get my head around the fact that this judge blocked Samsung from using evidence that completed negated the point of Apple's case. Its absurd.

I can't get my head around Samsung forgetting to submit such important evidence until after the deadline... Were they counting on making it impossible for Apple to provide counter-evidence? Deadlines exist for a reason!

And that is grounds for appeal. No sense watching this trial, no matter who wins it's getting appealed.

Please elaborate. How is perfectly justified evidence exclusion grounds to an appeal?

The exclusion of the evidence is justified, you are correct. However, that applies to both parties, equally. Once one party has presented the evidence and it has been allowed, both parties can use it. Samsung presented it, it was not allowed. Apple presented it, it was allowed. Samsung made reference to it after Apple presented it and it was allowed, and Samsung was told it was not allowed; it had already been allowed at this point, Koh is just on crack.

Inadmissible evidence is only accepted in a trial when an opposing party presents the trial with inadmissible evidence themselves. Apple did not present the trial with inadmissible evidence, so the "opening the door" doctrine does not apply.

Possibly waiting until jury selection/direction was finalized because then you cannot argue the point about "swaying the jury" with public material. The jurors are not allowed to research the case using any other material than what is presented in court. If they do, they are removed from the jury.

Of course you can argue that, it's called a mistrial, the jurors aren't sequestered! Plus by going to the media Samsung is making it extremely hard for the jury to actually avoid learning about the subject, in contempt to court. This isn't going to end well for them.

Exactly what is the reason for choosing to suppress the evidence? I've been trying to figure that out since this started, but there is no explanation (that I could find, anyway) of why something as seemingly germane to the case as original design documents that predate what you are accused of copying would not be allowed.

They missed the deadline. If the evidence was that important, how come Samsung, a company that has already been found guilty of destroying evidence even against court order telling them to retain it, forgot about it for so long?

That's not how it actually began, and you really should RTFA. Quinn's declaration is a nice read.

Please inform yourself, the Samsung bullshit propaganda is affecting your brain. As I mentioned, this is how the whole thing started. If you don't know the facts, refrain from posting. Also, Groklaw is an extremely biased source, and a declaration from the accused Samsung lawyer isn't exactly trustworthy either. Next time, stick to less biased sources.

A little hard to influence a jury that's already been sequestered, isn't it?

They haven't been sequestered, only selected and ordered to avoid consulting the media regarding this issue, an order that Samsung is making extremely hard to comply with, in contempt to court. Secondly, Quinn brought up the excluded evidence in the court room, which got him reprimanded by the Judge with a sanction threat, and that's what started the whole thing.

Neither can Apple, as they have used images of it in this trial. It's been allowed, already, as long as Apple is using it, but disallowed for Samsung; that's the crux of the problem here.

Those images were used because it came out after the iPhone. The "problem" (Samsung's problem) is that somehow they found a way to forget to file key evidence in this case before the deadline. This was their fault, the exclusion of the evidence is perfectly justified.

Apple included the F700 in their own presentation and said it was another example of Samsung copying them. I believe this is called "opening the door", which means the F700 is now admissable even if it is raised after discovery.

You are incorrect. Apple did not introduce inadmissible evidence in the trial, so this is not "opening the door".

The judge has to always maintain the image of impartiality, and this Judge Koh has not only failed to maintain the image of impartiality, but is making as ass of herself by flaunting her authority (even where it doesn't exist), and by making bad calls.

Where has she failed?

The evidence presented should not have been excluded, and what any party says to the press after jury selection is none of her damn business.

Yes it is, it's called contempt to court, and in this case can be taken as an attempt to influence the jury using excluded evidence since the jury isn't sequestered. Quinn's attempt to bring up this evidence in the court room after it was excluded adds further credence to this intend. Lastly, the evidence was excluded because samsung failed to meet the submission schedule, it is perfectly justified.

Long story short, she should have known better, and now that the cat is out of the bag, she either recuses herself in shame, or the matter will go to appeal, and her decision is rendered meaningless anyway. She screwed up, and now shes being played for a fool.

She's not going to decide on anything. That's what the jury is there for, and you can't appeal a jury's decision without being able to claim mistrial (i.e.: claim that the jury was in some way tainted by influence from the media).

I don't see how. That was their statement about being pissed that the evidence didn't get admitted. As the Groklaw article said, Samsung is fighting Apple in two courts now, and one of those is public opinion. I think this side of things requires they make their arguments in public. In addition, the judge denied sealing all the documents, so what else to do be release them yourself.

Samsung explicitly tried to influence the jury in the courtroom using excluded evidence, that's actually how all this began as well as why the Judge threatened that lawyer with sanctions.