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14 June 2018Patents

Samsung fights back against patent infringement claim

Electronics company Samsung has fought back against a patent infringement claim by filing a complaint for declaratory judgment of non-infringement.

The request was filed at the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday, June 12.

In December 2017, memory storage device manufacturer Bitmicro and its part-owner and licensee BNI filed a complaint at the US International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Samsung unlawfully imported certain “solid state storage drives and stacked electronics components” into the US.

Bitmicro alleged that Samsung’s accused products are types of memory chips that can be incorporated into various devices, such as computers, smartphones and tablets.

According to Bitmicro, the importation of these products infringed certain patents including: “Parallel erase operations in memory systems” (US patent number 6,529,416); “Multiple chip module and package stacking for storage devices” (7,826,243); “Multiple chip module and package stacking method for storage devices” (8,093,103); and “Multi-profile memory controller for computing devices” (9,135,190).

The ITC launched an investigation in January based on Bitmicro’s complaint. In May, the ITC concluded that Bitmicro had satisfied “the economic prong of the domestic industry requirements” for the ‘416, ‘103 and ‘243 patents. However, the commission said that Bitmicro failed to satisfy the requirement regarding the ‘190 patent.

Bitmicro and the Office of Unfair Import Investigations filed a petition for review of the initial determination.

Samsung said that Bitmicro’s ITC complaint, the commission’s investigation and the initial determination “established that a substantial controversy exists between the parties [Samsung and Bitmicro] having adverse legal interests of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant issuance of a declaratory judgment”.

In its complaint for declaratory judgment, Samsung argued that it has not infringed any of Bitmicro’s patents.

Samsung has requested a permanent injunction enjoining Bitmicro from asserting the patents-in-suit against any third party, and is seeking costs.

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