Samsung ' ripped off ' Apple, says lawyer as $2.5 billion battle starts
Apple attorney Harold McElhinny didn't mince his words at the start of the California trial in which Apple is seeking $2.5 billion damages from Samsung - ironically one of its major component suppliers .
Samsung Galaxy tablet
"At its highest corporate levels, Samsung decided to simply copy every element of the iPhone," he said. "Samsung had two choices -- accept the challenge of the iPhone ... and beat Apple fairly in the marketplace, or it could copy Apple. It is easier to copy than innovate."
Samsung, which has overtaken Apple in the worldwide smartphone market, flatly denies copying Apple, said the San Jose Mercury News. Instead it insists it has merely done what scores of companies have done -- evolve with its own products.
"It's not just Samsung," said Charles Verhoeven, the South Korean firm's attorney, explaining how smartphones burst on to the world. "The entire industry moved this way. Is that copying? No. It's competition."
Apple's first witness was Christopher Stringer, one of the company's lead designers, who worked on the original iPhone and iPad. His original drawings of an iPhone were shown to the jury.
Stringer told the jury that Apple's designs have been "ripped off, it's plain to see. It's offensive."
The trial in San Jose federal court ,expected to last four weeks, resumes on Friday.
The jury of seven men and two women, chosen on Monday, has few engineers or technical people .
Samsung is countersuing , alleging that Apple violated some of its central patent rights in Apple products.
The jury pool originally was "heavy on valley tech workers, some of whom had patents of their own," said the Mercury News. One was even a Google designer.
By the time the jury was chosen, the two companies had eliminated most of those types .
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The jury pool included some people "well behind the vanguard of the high-tech revolution," said the paper.
One admitted to having a 30-year-old Samsung microwave. . More potential jurors had iPhones and iPads than Samsung's Galaxy products.
But jurors tweeting and Facebooking during the trial is not likely to be an issue. The potential jurors generally were not big fans of Facebook, Twitter or social media in general.