In what has become a ritual, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh last week finished off a pretrial hearing in the patent showdown between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. by removing her reading glasses, looking down at the armada of lawyers and asking plaintively, “You sure you want to do this?”
Yes, Judge, they do.
On Tuesday, the most powerful players in the smartphone and tablet world will square off again in Koh’s San Jose, Calif., courtroom, this time in a retrial to decide how much Samsung must pay Apple for 13 products deemed to have violated Apple’s patent rights.
The trial is a redo of part of last year’s unprecedented legal battle that resulted in a jury verdict finding that Samsung went too far in imitating Apple iPhone and iPad technology. One Apple lawyer recently called the retrial “groundhog day.”
After last year’s trial, Koh slashed about $450 million from the jury’s $1 billion award, concluding that the panel improperly calculated damages.
