Patent Infringement Damages
Samsung Electronics received a jury verdict to pay about 400 billion won in compensation in a U.S. semiconductor patent infringement lawsuit. Earlier, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) was blocked from exporting Korean nuclear power plants to Eastern Europe due to a property rights infringement lawsuit.
As South Korea’s main exports, including semiconductors and nuclear power plants, are running up against U.S. nationalism, it remains to be seen if a solution can be found at a summit meeting between the two countries on April 26.
A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled in favor of U.S. semiconductor company Netlist in its lawsuit against Samsung Electronics, according to Reuters and other foreign media outlets. The jury found that Samsung’s memory modules for high-performance computers infringed upon five of Netlist’s patents.
The compensation is worth more than US$333 million, or about 400 billion won. In the past, when Samsung was earning 3 trillion won in operating profit per month, the amount of damages was not taken so seriously. However, with Samsung earning only 600 billion won in operating profit in the first quarter of 2023, the amount of damages looms large.
The case began in 2021 when Netlist claimed that Samsung’s memory products and other data technologies used in cloud computing servers infringed upon its patents. Samsung argued that the patents were invalid and that the companies’ technologies were even different.
Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) also received a lawsuit notification letter from Westinghouse. In October of 2022, the U.S. nuclear design company filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop KHNP from selling nuclear power plants developed with its technology to Poland and other Eastern European countries. The reactor in question was the APR1400, a new Korean pressurized water reactor.
Westinghouse asserted that KHNP must obtain a U.S. government permit to export reactors built with its technology. KHNP argued that although it utilized earlier technology of Westinghouse, the APR1400 is a Korean reactor built with its own technology and is not subject to license filing.
Industry insiders expect that the two companies will eventually cooperate, as Westinghouse has design technology but has to rely on Korean companies for manufacturing itself. On April 26 (local time), President Yoon Seok-yeol will hold a summit meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and these industrial issues are expected to be brought up then.