SAN JOSE, CA—"Where were you on January 9, 2007?"

That was the first question Apple's lawyer, Harold McElhinny, put to a jury of eight in a federal courtroom. It's the beginning of the second major trial in a long-running patent war in which Apple has accused its chief competitor, Samsung, of infringing several of its patents.

The iPhone led the world from physical keyboard to "tapping on a glass face," he said. "Do you remember when people used to talk on telephones? When there were pay telephones on every corner? It all changed that day in January."

That day, of course, is the day that Steve Jobs showed off the iPhone to the world at a Macworld convention in San Francisco.

"The introduction of the iPhone literally changed the nature of the telephone," said McElhinny. "In 2004, when this project started, it was considered extraordinarily risky. Apple was a computer company—it had no phones. It was going to invest this time to come up with a product that would compete with some of the biggest companies in the world: Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung."

But only Samsung chose to pursue a path of "intentional copying," McElhinny told the jury, blowing off Apple's patent rights in a desperate attempt to play catch-up.

For that, Apple is seeking what would be the largest jury award ever in a patent case: more than $2 billion for the sale of 37 million allegedly infringing phones. It's an extraordinary rate of about $40 per phone and a considerable escalation of the patent dispute.

The earlier 2012 trial led to a billion-dollar jury verdict against Samsung, which is now on appeal. However, Apple wasn't able to get an order barring any Samsung products from the market. This new trial concerns patent claims and counter-claims over a newer array of products: Samsung's Galaxy III, Note II, Stratosphere, and Galaxy Nexus phones. Samsung, meanwhile, has counterclaims that accuse the iPhone 5 of infringing two patents it purchased.

The trial is likely to bring to light internal documents that could be uncomfortable for both companies. Already during openings, Apple lawyers have shown Samsung documents that reveal the company's internal distress about being far behind Apple. Those documents also make clear that Samsung is a copycat, according to Apple lawyers.

On the other side, Samsung lawyers will paint a picture of Apple as obsessed with attacking Google, who they say is the real target of this lawsuit.

Samsung's lawyers displayed a never-before-seen 2010 e-mail from Steve Jobs laying out the agenda for Apple's executives in 2011. "Holy war with Google" was an entry high up on the list. The e-mail also revealed areas where Apple felt that it was behind Android. "Strategy: catch up to Google cloud services," read another line item on Jobs' e-mail. "Apple is in danger of holding on to the old paradigm too long (innovator's dilemma)."

Apple: Competitor at "crisis point" crossed to the "dark side"

McElhinny walked the jury through the five features that Apple patented and claims are infringed in this case: the slide-to-unlock patent, a patent on displaying autocorrected words, a patent covering the "data recognition" feature, the "universal search" patent, and background syncing.

"Each claim is an attempt to capture in words the idea, the invention, that the inventors claim in this patent," explained McElhinny, holding up the red-ribboned original copies of Apple's patents. "They give you the boundaries, the lines—as in a deed, so that people understand what is your property."

He gave a short description of each patented feature that Apple saw as its property, starting with slide-to-unlock. "This patent responded to a problem we're all familiar with, called pocket dialing," said McElhinny. Then, word correction: "An automatic correction invention gave people the confidence they could do correct and accurate typing on a touchscreen device." Data connectors: "This invention recognizes that [text is] a phone number, or e-mail address, or residential address and presents that to you along with a menu."

"The evidence in this case will show that Samsung copied the iPhone," said McElhinny. "They copied many, many features. There are limits to what we can accomplish in a single trial. We can't try 50 patents in this case—"

At that point, Samsung lawyer John Quinn shot out of his chair. "I object," he said, suggesting McElhinny was violating a pre-trial motion. "Overruled," said US District Judge Lucy Koh, without hesitation.

"We are here today... because of how one particular competitor, Samsung electronics, chose to react to the iPhone," said McElhinny. "Samsung was already a huge player in the phone field in 2007. Samsung recognized that it simply did not have a product that could compete successfully against the iPhone."

"By 2010 Samsung had reached a crisis point. A crisis point. Crisis is not my word—that's Samsung's word." Apple was now in possession of Samsung's internal documents, explained McElhinny, and those documents told a different story than what the jury would hear from Samsung witnesses.

"We have been able to deconstruct what Samsung was really thinking, what was really happening," he said.

One e-mail, from the head of Samsung's phone division, talked about a "crisis of design." That e-mail was used to great effect in the 2012 trial. Another document, not seen in 2012, spoke about how Samsung needed to start caring about "emotional user experience."

"Samsung is going to tell you, everyone keeps an eye on their competitors. It's competitive intelligence, and there's nothing wrong with that. To a point, all of that is true. But Samsung... went beyond the world of competitive intelligence and crossed into the dark side of intentional copying.

"They're going to say every one of these five patents is invalid, that the PTO made a mistake—not once, not twice, but on every one of these five patents," he said.

"I hope you will understand, the reason the damages in this case are high is because the scope of Samsung's infringement has been massive," he concluded. "It is not a secret that Apple is proud of its intellectual property. It will not be a secret that Apple has been hurt very, very badly by the infringement strategy that Samsung has used."

Samsung: "Google is an Apple obsession"

"Wow," Quinn began. "I can see why some of you might be looking at me sideways right now, after Apple's presentation of the case from two very skilled lawyers. But I am sure you appreciate you've only heard a small part of the story at this point."

"Yes, Apple is a great company, but they don't own everything," he said. "They don't own the only way to search on phones. They don't own the only way to sync. They don't own the only way to unlock a smartphone. We will prove to you that they have vastly overstated the scopes of these patent claims. They're counting on you to be confused and not understand that these are narrow software claims that cover one way to do things."

Then Quinn moved into a key theme of his defense: that the Apple lawsuit against Samsung was part of Steve Jobs' "holy war" against Google's Android system.

"The accused features on this phone were developed independently by some of the most sophisticated and creative minds in the smartphone industry," he said. "Those are the software engineers at Google, up the road in Mountain View."

It was Google, after all, that created Android: a mobile operating system used by "every smartphone company except Apple."

"But we're not going to point the finger at Google," said Quinn. "Google didn't copy. They independently developed this software without copying." He continued:

Your common sense will tell you, consumers don't choose one phone over another because of the particular way word correction suggestions are presented on the screen. There are a lot of different ways to do that. Syncing? There's more than one way to do that. The particular design of the unlock screen? That's not why consumers buy products. Apple's claims are all narrow. Apple's own real-world research they do… shows that people don't buy, they don't even ask iPhone purchasers: do you buy for this feature? Do you buy for that feature? Apple is here literally seeking billions of dollars for particular software configurations in the phone that most consumers aren't even aware are there. They want to take that big number, not only to the bank, but to get an order saying that none of these phones can be sold in the United States. It's an attack on Android.

At that point, McElhinny lodged his single objection during opening statements. Like Quinn earlier, he was immediately overruled.

Samsung phones are full of features that Apple doesn't have, said Quinn. They've got large screens; some have removable batteries; they implemented the faster 4G LTE standard more than a year before Apple had it in its phones.

He went on to attack Apple's infringement arguments, saying that they cover specific things that Samsung doesn't do. Samsung phones have a variety of unlock systems, which aren't similar to Apple's slide-to-unlock bar. As for the "universal search" patent, the idea that Google would copy Apple in the realm of search was preposterous, he said.

"I think it's fair Google knows search," said Quinn. "They had local search on desktops going back to 2004."

He went on to attack Apple's damages argument, which in many cases is asking for $40.10 per Samsung phone. While Samsung argues Apple's patents are invalid, the company also hired its own expert witness who found that the maximum damages payout should be $39.2 million.

And he addressed Samsung's two purchased patents that it's using to counter-claim against Apple. "Normally we at Samsung don't sue over patents like these," said Quinn. "In the pre-holy-war days, what happened in this industry is companies would get together and enter into cross-licensing agreements. That's what used to happen. But we did get sued, so we thought it was appropriate to defend ourselves."

Quinn had his own internal documents from Apple, including one in which Apple execs noted that "Samsung's brand impression is just as strong as Apple's in the US."

"Frankly, that drove Apple crazy," he said. "Google is an Apple obsession. Apple's whole focus is to beat Google's Android, and that is the purpose of this lawsuit."