Staggering how much ignorance there is about this case:
1) It was NOT TECHNICAL. It was predominately a lawsuit about trade dress and UI driven patent infringement. It is exactly the same as judging whether a Nike shoe has been copied or not. You don't need to understand the technicalities of the manufacturing process.
2) The Samsung standards essential patents WERE considered valid and infringed. Just that due to patent exhaustion Apple was exempt from infringement.
So maybe you should understand the very basics of the case first.
I'm strongly with you on (1). As people working within technology, we really want this case to be about a technical point which has some objectively correct conclusion.
The reality is that the US justice system doesn't work this way, and wasn't designed to. It's not technocratic in the way it reaches a verdict. The jury are not specialists, and aren't supposed to be. They are equals to every other citizen. They judge subjectively, representing the people. If they make a decision that doesn't align with the objective conclusion a specialist sees, that's still allowed.
Democracy is created with awareness of these kinds of 'mistakes'. See Aristotle's writing on democracy, and its benefits and pitfalls. It doesn't seem right sometimes, but it's a choice the US people have made actively.
Isn't a patent by its very definition "technical" in nature? Thereby requiring some technical know-how of the patents in question to adequately judge the case?
1) It was NOT TECHNICAL. It was predominately a lawsuit about trade dress and UI driven patent infringement. It is exactly the same as judging whether a Nike shoe has been copied or not. You don't need to understand the technicalities of the manufacturing process.
2) The Samsung standards essential patents WERE considered valid and infringed. Just that due to patent exhaustion Apple was exempt from infringement.
So maybe you should understand the very basics of the case first.