Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Samsung Electronics Co. moved from attacking the validity of Apple Inc.'s intellectual property in a trial over smartphones and tablet computers to claiming the iPhone maker infringes Samsung patents.
Samsung today made the tactical shift on the second day of presenting its case, in the third week of a jury trial in San Jose, California, by calling Woodward Yang, a Harvard University professor of electrical engineering, who testified that versions of Apple's iPhone, iPod and iPad infringe three of the Suwon, South Korea-based company's patents.
Yang focused on one patent that allows a user to scroll through photographs and send an e-mail with photographs contained in the messages. He pointed to Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch fourth generation, and the iPad2 as infringing products. Apple products also infringe a Samsung photo indexing patent and another for methods used in mobile devices to play MP3 music files, the engineering professor said.
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, sued Samsung in April 2011, accusing it of copying patented and trademarked designs, and Samsung countersued. The dispute is the first to go before a federal jury in a battle being waged on four continents for dominance in a smartphone market valued by Bloomberg Industries at $219.1 billion.
During cross-examination, Apple's lawyer, William Lee, displayed a chart showing that technology covered by the photo scrolling patent that Yang described wasn't used in 65 different Samsung smartphones manufactured in the last three years.
'Very Important'
"Samsung did not even claim to use this very important patent that you heard about this morning in any of these products, is that right?" Lee asked.
Yang confirmed that was correct.
Yesterday, Samsung called two computer scientists to attack Apple's claimed originality of its software patents at issue in the multibillion-dollar trial.
The testimony was aimed at countering a series of witnesses Apple called over the last two weeks who testified that Samsung has copied the design and technology of its iPhone and iPad.
Apple is claiming at least $2.5 billion in damages for patent and trademark infringement. Apple also wants to make permanent a preliminary ban it won on U.S. sales of a Samsung tablet, and extend the ban to Samsung smartphones.
Apple's Infringement
Samsung is trying to persuade the jury to find Apple's patents invalid and to award unspecified damages for Apple's infringement of its patents.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has limited each side to 25 hours to present their cases.
Koh yesterday granted a request by Samsung to exclude infringement claims related to three of its phones -- the Galaxy S i9000, the Galaxy Ace and the Galaxy S II i9100 -- on grounds that they weren't manufactured to be exclusively sold in the U.S. Apple's claims remain intact against more than 20 other Samsung devices.
The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 11- cv-01846, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
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