Google's Lockheimer as witness in Apple v. Samsung

Within a New York Times account of Apple v. Samsung:


Samsung’s lawyers called Mr. Lockheimer as a witness so he could demonstrate how Android was already well into development before the iPhone was introduced, making it unlikely that Apple was copied by Google and, by extension, Samsung.



One notes that U.S. patent law does not have an independent creation defense. Patent infringement is strict liability: does your product fall within the scope of the claims or not? It does not matter if you (or someone else) were working on the invention independently, and thus did not copy. Not relevant to infringement.

If these other efforts were made public, that might go to arguments that (here) the Apple patents were invalid. But not relevant to infringement.

These efforts by Samsung do go to a "good story" approach: In Apple’s latest patent fight with Samsung Electronics, lawyers on both sides are relying on the power of a good story to sway a jury.

The NYT article did present some humor:



At one point, Mr. Quinn tripped up on his questioning when he referred to a smartphone called the Samsung Omnia as “the Ammonia.”

“Don’t you mean Omnia?” Mr. Vellturo responded, and he then questioned whether Samsung needed to hire a new marketing team.