Sir Robin
FORTUNE — Remember the British case that Apple lost to Samsung last July in which the judge ordered Apple to publish a notice in newspapers and on its website correcting the impression left by the trial that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets had copied the iPad?
It’s back in the news, with a twist.
Apple (AAPL), you may recall, complied with the unusual order, but in such a passive aggressive way — adding its own marketing spin to the court’s language and quoting the judge as saying Samsung’s devices were “not as cool” as the iPad — that a judge in London’s highest court threw the book at them.
Sir Robin Jacob admonished Apple in the strongest terms, ordering it to pay Samsung’s legal fees on an “indemnity basis” (i.e. all possible costs, including parking, phone calls, etc. from day one), and spelling out precisely where Apple, in the language it added, basically lied.
“I hope,” Sir Robin wrote at the end of his ruling, “that the lack of integrity involved in this incident is entirely atypical of Apple.”
Here’s the twist: Samsung has hired him as an expert witness.
“I’m sure that Samsung and Sir Robin Jacob wouldn’t be doing this if there was any risk of this conduct violating the law,” writes FOSS Patents‘ Florian Mueller, who stumbled across Sir Robin’s name in the expert list in a separate case before the ITC.
But, Mueller adds:
“For someone so concerned with ‘integrity,’ it is utterly unusual to issue a high-profile and extreme ruling in favor of a particular party (Samsung in this case) only to be hired as an expert by that same party in another dispute.”
