Patent Infringement Suits Against Korean Firms Increasing
Non-practicing entities (NPEs) are indiscriminately filing patent lawsuits against Korean companies. The number of lawsuits, which had been on the decline for some time, has been growing again, fueling concerns among Korean electronics makers.
Solace OLED, an NPE, recently dropped lawsuits against Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). In September, Solas OLED filed a lawsuit claiming that Samsung Electronics infringed on its patent on OLED panels in its latest smartphone products including the Galaxy Z-Fold 2, and LG Electronics infringed on a patent on large OLED panels for TVs.
Solar OLED is an Irish patent management company that purchases patents and demands royalties through lawsuits based on the patents. The electronics industry complains that the "patent lawsuit risk" is growing as NPEs are indiscriminately filing lawsuits by filing lawsuits first and dropping some of them with small possibilities of winning.
Global NPEs' lawsuits against Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are showing no sign of decreasing. In September, NPE ACQIS Technology filed a lawsuit with a U.S. court, claiming that Samsung Electronics violated its patent in the process of producing products such as smartphones, tablet PCs and smart TVs. In August, Garrity Power Service (GPS) also filed a lawsuit against Samsung over Galaxy smartphones, taking issue with its wireless battery sharing function. In February, Neodron sued Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, accusing them of illegally stealing their patented touch screen technologies.
In particular, the number of NPEs' lawsuits against Korean companies had been on the decline until 2019 due to the introduction of a system to curb excessive patent lawsuits in the United States. But since the beginning of 2020, the number has been growing.
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office and the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency, the number of lawsuits between Korean companies and NPEs in the United States sank from 132 in 2018 to 90 in 2019 but is increasing again. It reached 66 in the first half of 2020 alone, up from 57 in the first half of 2019. Samsung Electronics hired new patent attorneys for the first time in its history in the second half of 2020, a move that was aimed at preparing for global patent disputes.
Meanwhile, a local court in Mannheim, Germany, recently ruled against LG Electronics and LG Display in a patent lawsuit filed by Solace OLED in 2018. the two LG firms said it would appeal immediately.