Grasping at Straws ⇥ androidpit.com

Steven Blum of Android Pit (not to be confused with):

One juror had a very profound affect on the outcome of the Apple vs. Samsung trial – and he may have been biased towards Apple all along.

Woah, this has got to be interesting. Does he have a few hundred shares of AAPL? Is he a former employee still on the payroll? I mean, that’s a big claim.

Meet Velvin R. Hogan, the foreman of the jury which decided Samsung’s fate in one of the most closely-watched trials in all of tech history. […]

A 67-year-old engineer, Hogan has three civil cases under his belt, a 35-year career in hard-drive technology (Memorex, Storage Technology, Digital Equipment) and even a U.S. patent to his name. It’s that U.S. patent which is currently causing a lot of controversy, as it covers a “method and apparatus for recording and storing video information.”

Well, that’s certainly interesting, but I don’t see the connection. Spell it out for me, Steven Blum.

The apparatus also has the ability to offload the video files to an internal removal storage device (like an SD card, perhaps). Filed in 2002, the patent came 3 years before the first iPod to integrate video, which means it could be used in an Apple device.

“Could”? Someone is spitballing here.

It could also have been used in a Samsung device as well (we really don’t know).

Well played, Steven Blum. Toss something at a wall and see if it sticks.

If Blum had taken even the most cursory read of patent number 7,352,953, he would have noticed that it’s a patent for, essentially, a kind of PVR cum smart TV. If he’d read the claims, he would have noticed the inclusion of removable storage media, a TV tuner, and a keyboard. I wasn’t aware that the fifth generation iPod had any of these features.

By the way, Steven, what source did you use for this information? Ah, yes.

Free tip, Steven: if you’re going to source information from Reddit, it’s in your best interest to double-check it before publishing.