SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) – A US judge asked that the chief executives of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd speak to each other at least once on the phone before a jury begins deliberating next week in the high stakes patent trial between the two tech companies.

Judge Lucy Koh, whose celebrity as the presiding judge in the Apple versus Samsung patent trial is growing, has barred one of the South Korean company’s top designers from testifying in her courtroom.

Apple and Samsung are going toe to toe in a patents disputemirroring a struggle for industry supremacy between the rivalsthat control more than half of worldwide smartphone sales.

South Korea’s Samsung, which is trying to expand in the United States, says Apple infringed several patents, including some for its key wireless technology.

Apple filed a patent infringement lawsuit last year against Samsung, accusing the South Korean company of copying its iPhone and iPad.

South Korea’s Samsung, which istrying to expand in the United States, says Apple infringedseveral patents, including some for its key wireless technology.

Before the jury was brought into the courtroom on Wednesday, Koh told attorneys for the companies that they had succeeded in raising awareness about the importance of their intellectual property rights.

Attorneys for both companies told Koh they would pass alongthe message.

Samsung continued presenting witnesses on Wednesday,including an industrial designer from South Korea who describeddeveloping the Galaxy line of tablets.

This version of the tablet was a bit thicker than the version they later released in the US When they released it at the event, there were about 80 competitive tablets there and the company saw that the Samsung design at the time was not good enough in comparison with them.

Speaking through a Korean interpreter, Jin Soo Kim said hebegan working on a tablet in October 2009, months before Applelaunched the iPad in January 2010.

Kim recounted the rationalebehind different design choices for the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The screen, for instance, was set at 10.1 inches both to maximize its size and contain manufacturing costs.

Asked by Samsung attorney John Quinn whether he copied thedesigns of any other company, Kim said: “we have not.”.

Kim says he won a Red Dot design award a few years ago, which you can see here, for Samsungs SGH U600 phone (see pic above).

Apple attorney Harold McElhinny showed Kim internal Samsungemails, referring to a meeting between Samsung and Googleexecutives.

Apples attorneys alleged there was a meeting between Google and Samsung at the 2011 World Mobile Congress and that in that meeting it was found that the galaxy design looked too much like the iPad and then asked Kim to change it because of this.

Google created the Android operating system, which runs on the Samsung phones and tablets at issue in the lawsuit.

Carli Saunders is a business journalist based in Sydney, Australia. Carli has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Carli spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.