SAN JOSE – Another day in court and another couple Wows!
It turns out serial entrepreneur
Tim A. Williams--a founder of hot startups such as Atheros, SiBeam, BeeCube back in the day—was the witness Intel objected to yesterday. Intel said it was not informed in a timely way and Williams had access to its source code.
Today we find out Williams is an expert witness these days—among other things--and was testifying he has seen Intel design documents and source code for its former Infineon Gold baseband processor. The chip implements the 3GPP release 6 standard on which Samsung has two patents and is suing Apple for infringing by using the basebands in the iPhone 4 and iPad2—its latest hottest products.
Even more fascinating is the chess match Williams and Apple attorney Bill Lee have under Lee’s cross examination. Lee needs to make Williams look bad, but this smart engineer and businessman has been through the mill of chip design, standards, source code—and the expert witness gig.
Expect a story in the near future about their wonderful chess game and what I read in the tea leaves of their exchanges. I think Williams likes this game, in part because the attorneys really can't follow the engineering depth Williams can go to for stuff like today's patent on
alternate e-bit interpretation. (Note: scroll down on hyperlink for details.)
For right now—it’s lunch break in court—here’s one interesting snippet:
Lee tries to show Williams’ testimony in his deposition to establish a point Lee cannot drag out of Williams on the stand. In essence he is trying to (in legal parlance) impeach his testimony.
Lee shows the deposition quote that seemingly contradicts an earlier point Willaims made and pushes Williams to answer ‘yes or no’ if this was his testimony “under oath.”
Williams: I am also under oath today and I don’t see how this answer supports your hypothesis.
Cool as a cucumber, even a faint smile on his face.
He gets paid good money for being able to bring deep engineer understanding, translate that to a jury of average Joes and Janes and take no bull from hard-nosed lawyers like Lee. Retained 50 times, 20 in the past year, he charges $550/hour and made a million buck last year and the year before for his work.
Maybe this is better than doing a startup?
Next: Standards and patents--tell the truth!