U.S. ITC Ends Investigations
Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have settled a patent infringement case with a European patent troll out of court. The case lasted for about one year.
The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) announced on March 15 that it will wrap up its investigation into Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics regarding a patent infringement complaint filed by Neodron Ltd, a patent troll based in Ireland. The decision followed the settlement between the two Korean companies and the Irish patent monetization company.
As a result, Samsung Electronics, Samsung Electronics America, LG Electronics, and LG Electronics USA, which had been under the ITC investigation since March 2020, were cleared of patent infringement charges. Industry insiders believe that Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have paid considerable amounts of money in damages to Neodron.
Apart from Samsung and LG, Neodron reached an agreement with five other global companies -- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Motorola and Sony. Neodron filed a complaint against these companies on Feb. 14, 2020, claiming that they violated Article 337 of the Customs Act by infringing on its four patents on touch screens.
Neodron filed its first patent infringement lawsuit with the ITC in May 2019 against multiple companies such as Samsung Electronics, Dell, Amazon, and Microsoft. The ITC launched an investigation in June 2019, about a month after it received the complaint.
Neodron reached an agreement with Samsung Electronics and other defendants in January with regard to this case. As a result, Samsung Electronics completed all of its legal battles against Neodron at the ITC over the past two years. In addition, a separate patent infringement lawsuit filed by Neodron against Samsung Electronics and Samsung Display at the Western District Court of Texas 2020 was reportedly concluded through a recent agreement.
In particular, Neodron which reached the agreement with Samsung and LG this time has been found "one entity" with other patent trolls that have caused disputes several times. Neondron is registered as a subsidiary of Atlantic IP, an Irish non-practicing entity (NPE). Atlantic IP's homepage says that Solas OLED and Sonrai Memory are its major subsidiaries.
Solas OLED, a patent troll specializing OLED patents, has also filed multiple patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung Electronics' smartphones and LG Electronics' OLED TVs since September 2020. LG has reached an agreement, but a dispute with Samsung is still underway.
In February, Sonrai Memory filed two patent infringement lawsuits with the Western District Court of Texas in the U.S. in reference with Samsung Electronics’ and LG Electronics' smartphone AP software.