Bonbons and bombshells from the courtroom

August 15, 2012

SAN JOSE – Google demanded Samsung change the design of an early Galaxy Tab so it would not look so much like the Apple iPad, according to a Samsung email.

(Excepts from the emails are posted on the next page.)

An Apple employee came back from Mobile World Congress in 2007, after it had announced but not shipped the original iPhone, and created a trip report comparing the iPhone in detail to the very similar looking Samsung F700 and the LG Prada handsets.

(Slides from that internal Apple MWC trip report are posted on the third page of this story.)

A veteran computer science professor said a key Apple patent on making a mobile display bounce back smartly when the user scrolls beyond the edge of some content was a technique he said he taught “to my sophomore course for at least a decade.”

These were three bombshells that landed in just the afternoon session of testimony at Apple vs. Samsung case here.

While drinking all this in, I saw a tweet from a Forbes contributor who said he found something interesting in the pages of exhibits handed out at the end of each day in court. He claimed there was information in that mega mountain somewhere that suggested Samsung plans to roll an 11.8-inch tablet this year with LTE that he believes could outpace the iPad just as the Galaxy III is beating the iPhone 4 today.

Geez!