The jury deciding Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.’s $2 billion patent-infringement case asked the judge for additional evidence about whether Google Inc. was mentioned when Steve Jobs, the iPhone maker’s cofounder, decided to sue.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, in a note responding to the jury’s question yesterday, said the panel can only consider evidence that was introduced during the trial and that no supplemental material will be provided. Yesterday was the jury’s first full day of deliberations following a trial with almost four weeks of testimony.

Samsung argued at trial that Apple’s real target in the lawsuit is Google’s Android operating system. Android is used to run Samsung smartphones, and most of Apple’s claims in its second U.S. trial against the Suwon-based maker of Galaxy phones relate to Android functions.

“Reading between the lines, there appears to be some disagreement among jurors about why this case was filed,” Brian Love, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said in an email about the jury’s request.

“In particular, the jury seems to be debating whether this case represents a genuine effort by Apple to protect patents it truly values or, instead, is a pretext for a general attack on Samsung and Google.”

The patent disputes began when Samsung released its Galaxy smartphones in 2010. Jobs, who died Oct. 5, 2011, initiated contact with Samsung over his concerns that the Galaxy phones copied the iPhone. Jobs later vowed to wage “thermonuclear war” to prove that phones running on Android copy the iPhone. (Bloomberg)