In Peter’s opinion, to no one’s surprise, he has agreed with all of Apple’s claims about how Samsung’s range of a dozen odd products does infringe on three of Apple’s patents. With regards to infringement on the USD618,677 patent about the flat front, rectangular shape with curved corners and speaker grill design, Samsung rebutted the claim with four instances of prior art, including the LG’s Prada smartphone and the 2005 Sharp phone’s design. While Bressler agreed with Samsung’s counsel’s claims that these examples also had similar designs, he objected to the process of analysis of patents and prior art. Apple’s counsel then proceeded to quiz Bressler about the design of the back of the Galaxy S 4G and its impact on the ‘677 patent, specifically, the presence of a small hump at the top and bottom of the back of the phone. However, Bressler indicated that the ‘677 patent in question was only concerning the design of the front face. Scott Stringer, in his testimony on July 31, had also stressed about the need for uniformity in the bezel’s thickness all around the phone, as per Apple’s design patent ‘087. According to this patent, all four corners must be of equal radii, the speaker grill needs to have a lozenge shape and be centered, both horizontally and vertically, in its location on the front face, that the device should be nominally flush with front glass, and should have a minimalist black front face, also known as “black oily pond” in iPhone’s case. However, Samsung argued about the finer points of this patent, bringing to everyone’s notice how Samsung’s Infuse 4G lacks a bezel and even features a much wider casing than that of the iPhone. Samsung also pointed out that the Galaxy S 4G does not have equal radii across the 4 corners, and that the bottom corners are wider than those on the top. To these claims by Samsung, Bressler retorted that an ordinary observer would fail to notice these individual design elements and that the overall design impression that Samsung’s devices leave on an ordinary observer do tend to get the observer confused with that of Apple’s devices. This statement by Bressler is in complete affirmation with Apple’s claims of how Samsung’s products are designed so similarly with Apple’s that the average consumer confuses the latter’s designs as something that was created by Apple.
