Samsung told to pay $15m for Rembrandt patent infringement
A Texas court has ordered Samsung to pay $15 million in damages for infringing a patent covering the Bluetooth communication method.
The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division ruled that Samsung infringed US patent 9,023,580 (‘580), which is owned by licensing company Rembrandt Wireless Technologies.
The ‘580 patent covers a method of communicating between two mobile phones at a short distance—a process commonly used by Bluetooth, a standard wireless technology.
At the centre of the dispute is the use of Bluetooth by Samsung’s Galaxy S II and Galaxy S III mobile phones, as well as other products manufactured by Samsung.
Rembrandt had originally requested more than $30 million in damages, but was reportedly only given half.
The patent was issued to the licensing company in 2011, two years after Rembrandt applied for it, but its priority date was set as December 5, 1997.
Rembrandt had sued Samsung for allegedly infringing the patent in March 2013.
Then in May 2014, Samsung challenged its validity by seeking an inter partes review at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Samsung argued that a number of claims in the patent were obvious based on a draft standard agreement published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1996.
The IEEE sets standards in a range of technology areas.
But four months later, the USPTO denied Samsung an inter partes review because it had not shown that the draft standard could be relied on as prior art.
Although the draft standard was published in 1996, the USPTO said that because it was not publicly available by the time of the ‘580 patent’s priority date of December 5, 1997, Samsung could not “demonstrate the unpatentability of the challenged claims”.
A spokesperson for Samsung told WIPR: "We feel that the jury's decision is unfortunate and we plan to take all legal measures necessary, including a renewed motion for judgement as a matter of law, so that what we have asserted during the trial is accepted in the court's final judgement."
Rembrandt has yet to respond to a request for comment.
