In a patent case, there are at least three different battles going on, and they're largely orthogonal. It's important to keep this all in mind.

- Patent infringement/invalidity. This is where it begins. This is the basis on which a court might find a party guilty. I've done a bunch of expert witness consulting in this arena.

- Damages. There are typically a whole separate set of experts that start with the *presumption* of patent infringement and try to work out a proper royalty payment.

- People being stupid. Lawyers love to go fishing though old emails, because inevitably there's somebody writing something dumb ("make it more like the competition" or "we'll kill them!") that makes one of the parties look like a bad actor, and might help sway a jury. This can also, in some cases, lead to charges of "willful infringement", which has an impact on the magnitude of the damages.

Apple v. Samsung is a microcosm of all of these things. What I can't offer is an opinion on how well either side is doing. What we're hearing and seeing is typically just a fraction of the behind-the-scenes-action.