Apple v. Samsung: Schiller to Testify Friday as Apple Calls on Top Brass

We're two days into Apple v. Samsung litigation, and it's been a doozy of a trial thus far. Friday shouldn't be disappointing either: It promises to provide never-before-seen looks into Apple's creative process as the legal crew from Cupertino calls heavyweight witnesses to the stand.
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We're two days into Apple v. Samsung litigation, and it's been a doozy of a trial thus far. Friday shouldn't be disappointing either: It promises to provide never-before-seen looks into Apple's creative process as the legal crew from Cupertino calls its witnesses to the stand.

Apple executives Phil Schiller (senior vice president of worldwide marketing) and Scott Forstall (senior vice president of iOS software) will be the first two to testify Friday morning in a San Jose, California federal court. But upcoming testimonies aren't just limited to top Apple brass. Apple's rolling list of trial witnesses includes Justin Denison, Samsung's Chief Strategy Officer; Wookyun Kho, a Samsung engineer; Peter Bressler, an industrial designer and University of Pennsylvania professor; and Ravin Balakrishna, a University of Toronto computer science professor and interface designer.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Apple will also be calling on graphic designer Susan Kare to provide testimony. Kare created some of Apple's most enduring software icons, including those famous pictographs of a floppy disc, wristwatch and "happy Mac" bearing a smiley face. How her work relates to the iPhone and iPad remains to be seen, but we can surmise that Apple will be looking to Kare, Bressler and Balakrishna to affirm what it believes is the incontestable originality of Apple's in-house design.

We haven't even finished two days of court proceedings, and already the trial has provided compelling drama for technology enthusiasts. Monday's proceedings involved the tedium of jury selection, but the second day of the trial was marked by juicy opening statements from each side. Apple painted a picture of innovation and ingenuity, and claimed Samsung's 3G-related patents are old and not applicable to Apple products. Samsung, meanwhile, trumpeted its broad product line to demonstrate that the iPhone didn't cast undue influence over the aesthetics of Galaxy smartphones, and went into technical detail about the patents involved in the case.

Trial watchers may find the action occurring outside of the courtroom even more intriguing than what's going on inside. On Tuesday, Samsung lawyer John Quinn sent out a public statement decrying Judge Koh’s ruling to let Apple say the Samsung F700 smartphone was an iPhone copy in its opening statement. Samsung then publicly released two batches of evidence Koh had ordered to be excluded from the case. Judge Koh wasn't pleased, and Apple even less so – its lawyers filed a document requesting the Court rule that Apple’s design patent claims were valid and infringed by Samsung. (More details about this imbroglio can be found in the fourth and fifth images in the gallery above.)

And now, as we await more revelations in day three of the trial, let's take a look at the most intriguing product prototypes and illustrations that are being used as exhibits in the case. Click through the gallery above, and please share your thoughts in the comments section below.