Stefan Mileschin

MIT expert John Hauser got into hot water when told a US court that customers were prepared to pay $100 for the three patents that Apple considered were violated by Samsung.

Needless to say, Hauser's expert testimony was jumped on by Samsung for living in Apple's reality distortion field.

According to Reuters, Hauser said tablet consumers would be willing to pay $90 for the same patented features as what they would pay $100 for on smartphones. This will be important when adding up the damages for Apple, which wants $2.5 billion from Samsung.

Samsung attorney William Price pointed out flaws in Hauser's argument. Like why he didn't tell jurors something more useful like what consumers would pay for features like additional computer memory on different tablet models so that these could be compared to the real world prices that Apple charges.

In other words Apple would not dream of charging $100 for each phone for those patents which were a small part of the overall package. If everyone charged what a patent was "worth" using this method each phone would be work several thousand dollars.

Hauser said he was confident in his methodology, but he admitted that the results do not necessarily correspond to what customers would actually pay for such technology in the real world.

So, in short, it was a random figure designed to win over a jury rather than based on any real facts and you might as well have asked the cat to choose a random number by sticking its paw on playing cards.

Also in the stand was Apple patent portfolio director Boris Teksler who said that Apple generally did not allow others to use its design patents. He could count "on one hand" the number of instances it has permitted other companies to use its design patents. All of the three patents in the case were special to Apple and it would never let any other company play with them, he said.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/samsu...ers-mit-expert