An E-Brief Reading Guide to the Latest Decision in Apple v. Samsung

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As a patent attorney and an iPhone addict, I spent yesterday morning reading the latest decision from the Federal Circuit in the patent war raging between Apple and Samsung.

Because I am a tech geek as well as a patent geek, I bookmarked the opinion in Adobe Acrobat as I read. This bookmarking is something we use in e-briefs (or ebriefs if you prefer) to let the reader jump to sections of a long document. I started this bookmarking for my own use so that I could later refer back to the opinion. However, as I went, it occurred to me that this bookmarked opinion may be helpful to others. So, I added a hyperlinked table of contents and some back buttons (like we use in e-briefs), and here it is: the Apple III opinion - e-brief style.

Below, I provide a short video explaining how to bookmark PDFs yourself if you are so inclined, as well as some links to the Patently O blog posts analyzing the decision.

The Decision

This decision concerns whether a permanent injunction should issue stopping Samsung from selling phones that have been determined to infringe Apple’s patents and trade dress. The district court denied the permanent injunction. The Federal Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, giving both Apple and Samsung some wins. The case will now head back to District Court Judge Lucy Koh in federal court in San Jose.

How to Bookmark Your Adobe Acrobat Document

As I mentioned above, I use bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat documents to find my way through long documents. They are very useful when you come back to a decision months later. If you would like to bookmark your own documents, it is quite simple. You need to take the following steps:

• Open the bookmarks panel of the Adobe document;
• Open the Properties under the File pull down, and go to Initial View. Select Bookmarks Panel and Page. (This makes the document automatically show the bookmarks for you or any other user who opens it).
• Highlight text, right click, and select Add Bookmark (or hit “Ctrl-B”).
• Save the document.

Here’s a short video showing the steps:

More Analysis of the Apple III Decision

If you want to read more about the meaning of the Apple III decision, I suggest reading these two excellent posts in the Patently O blog:

• Design patents, trade dress & Apple III by Sarah Burstein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law; and
• Federal Circuit offers Apple Second Chance to Block Sales of Samsung Galaxy Nexus Devices by Dennis Crouch.

More Information on E-Briefs

If you’d like to learn more about e-briefs and why we recommend e-briefs for any complicated case, you can also read my earlier blog post Try E-Briefs As Part of Your Hearing or Trial Presentation.

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