On a trial-free day, Apple and Samsung still find a way to keep the court busy. They just filed letters relating to a trial exhibit that Apple would like to show to the jury, which is this TmoNews ("The Unofficial T-Mobile Blog") post on Samsung's reactivation of the universal search feature of the Galaxy Nexus, which apparently happened in late 2012 after the Federal Circuit lifted the injunction.
Samsung would accept the admission of that document per se, but only if Apple showed the complete document including user comments, while Apple wants to redact certain user comments (some in total, some others in part). The redacted comments and passages largely fall into two categories: negative sentiment about Apple's lawsuits and the validity of its asserted patents, and comments that refer to potential workarounds by Samsung and Google for the injunction patent.
Here are the comments Apple has redacted out (Samsung filed the complete article, and it's still on the Internet anyway):
atari37: "I thought the universal search patent was invalidated but I'm not too sure. Can't find it anywhere. The Bounce back patent was however invalidated and that might be what I was thinking of. [...]"
bumrocky: "[...] They must have bypassed the patent, and found a loophole to do it using a new process."
vinterchaos: "[...] Hate this lawsuit garbage."
Jamille Browne: "The people that were deprived of such privileges due to crapple's non-sense"
gpt2010: "[...] Not sure how Samsung and Google are getting away with this since one of the major reasons for the lawsuit was local search. [...]"
Chris: "They are getting away with it because it's not doing a 'Siri' like search. That's what the whole lawsuit is about.
So technically, if you don't do a siri like search, you would then be allowed to go on.
Like Google said before, they found a work around and that lifted the ban."
Josue: "ismell another stupid lawsuit by crapple"
Chris: "The ban was already lifted because Google got a workaround a week after the ban was issued. You can find this article/google statement if you google it.
That's what allowed the GNexus to continue selling."
Jamille Browne: "I think they restored it because the verdict was overturned maybe? I'm not 100% sure but that may be the reason."
Josue: "hope so i hate when apple sues ppl for BS things"
I distance myself from all of those comments and, in particular, a certain offensive modification of Apple's name. It's a great company. I prefer Android as a platform over theirs, and I disagree with some of their patent-related positions and claims (the damages claim in the ongoing trial, for example), but my quoting those commenters doesn't have anything to do with my own views. I only provided the quotes above to show exactly what Apple doesn't want the jury to see.
According to Samsung's brief, Apple wants to use that blog post and the redacted version of the comments to show "consumer sentiment" in terms of consumers having temporarily missed the universal search feature (which Apple argues shows that the feature is valuable). But Samsung points to a deal between Apple and the court that any reference by Apple to that story would allow Samsung to discuss the appeals court's reversal of the injunction.
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