People concerned about software freedom have been disappointed, to say the least, about the recent legal victory of the patent-abusing bastards at Apple. How, in the presence of large amounts of prior art, could the jury have found in Apple's favor?
It seems the answer is simple: they skipped those key arguments because they were "bogging us down".
This is rather like the jury in a murder trail skipping over the question of whether anyone was actually killed. If there's prior art showing that your invention was an obvious development of the field, your patent is not valid. Ideally the patent office should do that examination before issuing a patent, but it doesn't; so the question only arises after some patent-abusing bastard takes someone to court.
The jury's decision to ignore prior art was made under the leadership of it foreman, Velvin Hogan -- a patent-holder himself, who could stand to benefit by this precedent.
This clear case of jury bias will probably figure heavily in Samsung's appeal. Also likely to appear in their appeal is the way that Samsung was disallowed from presenting evidence in its favor.