hankyoreh

The Samsung Galaxy S7 (Hankyoreh archives)

A US jury handed down a verdict on June 16 ordering Samsung Electronics to pay US$400 million in compensation for the improper use of key mobile technology patents in its smartphones.

Samsung Electronics previously held repeated meetings with officials at the national university employing the professor who holds the patent rights in connection with the lawsuit to encourage a countersuit claiming patent ownership, while requesting that the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy investigate the “improper leaking of industry technology.” But it now appears likely to come out on the losing side in the case.

The patent for which Samsung Electronics must pay 400 billion won in damages pertains to a technology called FinFET that was invented in 2001 by Lee Jong-ho, a professor at Seoul National University, and patented in the US in 2003. This is a three-dimensional transistor technology used in smartphones and tablet computers that speeds up the use of mobile devices.

Currently, Lee’s patent rights are being exercised by KAIST Intellectual Property (KIP), a subsidiary of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Unlike Samsung Electronics, Intel has paid 10 billion won in fees to use the patented technology since 2012. Since Samsung Electronics has refused to pay the patent fees despite using this technology since it released the Galaxy S5 in 2015, KIP filed a patent violation lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in 2016.

The jury at the Texas court found that Lee’s patent was valid and that Samsung Electronics had infringed that patent. Importantly, the jury ruled that Samsung’s patent infringement was “willful” that is, it had refused to pay fees for the technology despite knowing about the patent. Given the ruling of willfulness, the amount of damages in the district court’s final sentence could be increased to as much as triple the original amount, or 1.2 trillion won (US$1.09 billion).

The jury ruled that Samsung should pay an amount corresponding to about 40 times what Intel paid in fees.

“South Korea’s chaebol have often ignored the technology developed by individual inventors, small and medium-sized startups and universities, appropriated that technology or paid a pittance in fees. I hope that this trial will serve as a warning about such behavior,” Kang In-gyu, president of KIP, said in a telephone conversation with The Hankyoreh.

The main administrative building of Kyungpook National University in Daegu. (Hankyoreh archives)

By Song Chae Kyung-hwa, staff reporter

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