Even though I didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt after spending a good part of the summer in a courtroom listening to the high-stakes patent trial between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., I did walk away with a souvenir.
Thanks to artist Vicki Ellen Behringer, I now own a small, signed courtroom sketch of Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny’s direct questioning of Phil Schiller, Apple’s global marketing chief, on Aug. 3, 2012.
Jealous?
I expect that one day, far into the future, my postcard -- a reproduction of one of the nearly three dozen pen, ink and watercolor drawings created by Behringer during the month-long trial -- may be worth something to someone keen for Apple memorabilia. But the truth is my reproduction won’t be worth as much as one of the original drawings.
Those drawings are now up for grabs.
The 11-by-15 inch images took anywhere from 75 minutes to 2 hours to complete, says Behringer, who’s spent the past 20 years sketching her way through high-profile trials in Northern California featuring everyone from Michael Jackson to the Unabomber to convicted murderer Scott Peterson. She typically works on multiple images at a time, averaging a sketch an hour.
Created for news clients including Reuters, CNN, CNBC and Cnet as a way to capture witnesses, lawyers, the judge and jury in action -- cameras and videos are not allowed in federal courtrooms as a general rule – the sketches feature Apple and Samsung’s top lawyers, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh, the nine jurors who heard the case and the dozens of company executives and expert witnesses called to testify.
(Apple sued Samsung, accusing the company of copying the designs of its iPhone. Samsung countersued, saying Apple had violated its patents. The jurors sided with Apple on Aug. 24.)
Behringer, who traveled from her home near Sacramento, California, to immortalize the Apple vs. Samsung drama in San Jose, California, federal court, has priced her drawings starting at $450. That’a a deal compared to a Michael Jackson original courtroom sketch, which starts at $700.
She’s also offering 11-by-15 signed prints of the Apple/Samsung drama for $125.
She has already sold about five of the 34 originals, though she won’t name any of the buyers. “It’s usually someone who’s in the picture and they want to put in their office, give it to a relative, use it as advertising on their website or even just put it up on the wall in their office,” she says.
To enliven the typical courtrooms that serve as the stage for such high-profile cases, Behringer uses pinks, oranges and blues in her work -- hues that you’d be hard pressed to find in the courtroom except, perhaps, among the more colorful spectators. “Most courtrooms are so bland. Everything is wood or off-white and everyone is wearing black or dark suits,” she says. “Any bit of color I can add to it just makes for a better presentation. It seems to work. Everyone still knows it’s a courtroom. “
The fifth-floor courtroom used by Judge Koh in the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in downtown San Jose was no exception. There were wooden benches, beige walls, and dozens of lawyers clad in dark gray and blue.
In the past, news agencies had a photographer snap Behringer's sketches before reproducing them in print or showing them on TV. Nowadays, Behringer takes a photo of her drawings on her iPhone and emails them to clients.
The irony of using an iPhone to help illustrate stories about a patent case about the influence of the iPhone on other smartphones isn't lost on Behringer. She also says it's kind of funny that she was seated among the rows of Samsung lawyers and executives attending the trial. “I’m not saying their equipment wouldn’t have worked just as well, it’s just that I had an iPhone."
When she’s not in the courtroom, Behringer does other illustration work, miscellaneous editorial drawings and pet portraits. High-profile cases come along every one or two years in Northern California. Fortunately, she’s now starting to see more interest from souvenir hunters in her work.
“In every trial, I’m now getting people who have just been following the case -- average people who would like a memento of the trial,” she says. “There are more and more people becoming collectors."
