While indiscriminate patent litigation by a global patent management company (Non Practicing Entity (NPE)) targeting Korean companies is rising again, Korea’s leading company, Samsung, is becoming the main target of NPE. NPE is a term that refers to a company or organization that earns royalties by purchasing a patent without any production activity and then filing a lawsuit based on it.
According to the electronics industry on the 4th, lawsuits of patent monsters against Samsung have been followed in the United States in the past month or so. There are a total of 3 cases revealed externally, including 2 cases from Samsung Electronics and 1 case from Samsung Display. The most recent attack case is’Solar OLED,’ headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Solar OLED filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Display in the Texas Western District Court on the 26th of last month (local time). Solar OLED is known to have designated the OLED display module produced by Samsung Display and supplied to Apple as a patent violation item.
Solar OLED has filed a lawsuit against Samsung Display and the US subsidiary of Samsung Electronics in May 2019 to the Texas Eastern District Court and the US International Trade Commission (ITC), and the trial is in progress. Solar OLED dropped the ITC lawsuit in November of last year, but it is known that it filed a lawsuit again in December of last year after reinforcing data.
On the 23rd of last month,’Sunray Memory’, which belongs to the same group as Solar OLED, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics’ Korean headquarters and US subsidiary in Texas Western District Court. Sunray Memory is known to have claimed that two patents for’multiprocessor chip with multiple operating system’ were infringed. Specifically, they claim that their patents were stolen from the driving technology of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC chip mounted on Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S20 smartphone and the NAND flash technology applied to the Galaxy S10 series. Sunray Memory is active as a subsidiary of NPE’Atlantic IP’ in Ireland along with Solar OLED, and this is the first time it has filed a lawsuit against a Korean company. Sunray Memory has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against LG Electronics in addition to Samsung Electronics.
Earlier,’Evolved Wireless’, an Austin, Texas-based company, filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics against Samsung Electronics in the ITC and the Texas Eastern District Court on the 1st of last month. According to the electronics industry, there are 100 types of products alleged infringement including smartphones such as Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Z Fold 2 and Galaxy S21 series, tablet PCs, and smart watches. Evolved Wireless claimed that Samsung Electronics violated Article 337 of the U.S. Customs Act in the process of importing long-term evolution (LTE) compatible cellular equipment into the U.S. ITC said in a statement on the 2nd that it has decided to initiate an investigation related to LTE cellular equipment.
The industry pointed out that it is a structural problem that the patent monster attacks against Samsung are continuing. Samsung is also embarrassed. As in the past lawsuits with Apple, manufacturers have no choice but to refer to third-party technology in the process of product and service development, so in a patent lawsuit between manufacturers, it is difficult for either party to unilaterally gain an advantage. This is because it is difficult for companies to respond to because they are attacking with only the patent right.
[노현 기자 / 박재영 기자]
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