Apple's $1bn jury verdict against Samsung is patently ridiculous

So, nine good men and women true have found noble, American as apple pie, Apple, the victim of illegal effrontery by the evil South Korean Samsung and awarded their homespun hero a considerable $1bn in damages.

However most sensible people will agree that asking a bunch of average Joes to make a decision on a legal spat between two world-leading firms on the ridiculously complex world of patents, particularly technology patents, seems ludicrous.

While even those in the legal profession would struggle to comprehend the scope of the case, those in the jury managed to master it all in three days, which suggests they all should take up careers in the legal profession.

Furthermore, and I like this bit a lot, only one member of the jury owned an iPhone, and none owned a Samsung smartphone - details that should really ring alarm bells in both firms' marketing departments.

One member, unemployed, didn't even own a mobile phone.

The jury's decisions didn't even make any sense. Legal site Groklaw noted that many aspects of Samsung products were found by the jury not to have infringed Apple patents, but damages were then later awarded to Apple. This forced the judge to request the jury reassess its decisions.

Furthermore, how did the jury even reach their financial decisions as listed in the ruling? For example, they decided the lost profits to Apple from sales of the Galaxy S II, were $100,326,988? How on earth can members of a thrown-together jury reach such a specific figure?

Of course, this means Samsung's appeal is going to have plenty of clout, most likely sending the case back to court to begin all over again.

But there's a wider element to all this, which has already been written ad infinitum but bears repeating, how can half of these patents be granted in the first place?

On the design side, the case revolved around, basically, a rectangle with a few buttons along the side.

The iPhone and the slew Samsung devices available on the market do all look broadly similar, I grant you, but no more than you'd expect for a device that needs to fit in a pocket and the hand, contain a touchscreen and buttons for volume, switching it on and off, and camera functions.

Think of CD Discman devices. They were all round (obviously), had a few function buttons around the side, and usually a little display screen for track information, and that was about it.

Or, flatscreen TVs. Every device is rectangular, with buttons, with corners and design points, but no-one is suing chunks out of each other there.