Apple vs Qualcomm Trial Gets Underway as Jury Selection Complete

Apple and Qualcomm’s multi-billion dollar patent battle kicked off yesterday in San Diego before US District Court Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of the Southern District of California. The $27 billion trial will determine whether Qualcomm operates a smartphone modem chip monopoly and charges too much in licensing fees.

Jury selection for the five-week trial, which took the entire day Monday, ended up in selecting a pilot, a former baseball pitcher, and a retired nurse, among others. Everyone with an engineering degree or technology expertise was dismissed.

According to CNET, members selected for the jury are moderately young, fairly diverse and well educated. Of the nine jurors, three are women. Half the group members are white while only two are retired:

One juror is a retired clinical psychologist who counseled children who were terminally ill. After retirement from his private practice, he worked with UnitedHealthcare on investigating attempted and completed suicides. 

Another man is a former professional pitcher for the Kansas City Royals. He now works as an air traffic controller in San Diego. A third man on the jury is a pilot, and another male juror has an MBA in retail sales management and works at a power tools company.

One of the three women on the jury is an environmental consultant, another is an accountant, and the third is a retired nurse who instructed other nurses on home health care practices.