At most, Pennington wondered if Google might be encouraged to do the attacking in a marketing campaign that Samsung could co-operate with. But three days later, two days after Steve Jobs died, Pennington was singing a different tune. Lamenting that widespread eulogies for Jobs had created an "unintended benefit for Apple" because "what consumer wouldn't feel great about purchasing a device developed by such a person?", he suggested the time was right for ads that attacked Apple's products.

"This is our best opportunity to attack iPhone," Pennington wrote.

"We are going to execute what you are recommending in our Galaxy SII holiday campaign and go head to head with iPhone 4s," Samsung chief marketing officer Todd Pendleton later replied. "We are working on a very aggressive strategy touting our advantages in hardware/software."

The case in San Jose Federal Court involves a series of patent infringement claims – for the most part Apple complaining that Samsung employed features in its smartphones, including the Galaxy SII, that infringed a variety of iPhone patents.

Samsung also bought several patents after the previous Apple-Samsung patent trial, which was decided in Apple's favour, and now claims Apple is infringing on them. The case is likely to continue for several more weeks.