Recently, Samsung Electronics won a patent lawsuit related to wireless charging technology against NuCurrent, showing the importance of its patent invalidation strategy.
Why was Samsung Electronics attacked by NuCurrent?
NuCurrent
was founded in 2009 by students from Northwestern University and is considered
an early pioneer in wireless charging technology. Samsung Electronics had discussed technology alliances with NuCurrent since
2015. However, in 2018, NuCurrent filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung
Electronics related to wireless charging technology applied to Galaxy S7 and
S8. In response, Samsung Electronics argued that the patents were unpatentable that
NuCurrent claimed infringement. In the end, PTAB accepted Samsung Electronics' objection and recognized the
patent invalidity.
NuCurrent's
patent, US9941729 B2 could be invalidated by citing the patent, KR 10-2013-0045307A
of KthePower, a Korean small company. The KthePower’s patent filed in 2013 specifies a configuration of a coil
structure related to wireless charging, so it was judged that NuCurrent's
patent filed in 2015 was unpatentable. KthePower, a small company in Korea, was founded by former Vice Chairman Lee
Ki-tae, who caused Samsung Electronics' "Anycall Myth". During PTAB trial, Samsung Electronics found out the KthePower’s patent and
acquired the patent right, and the current right holder is Samsung Electronics.
The Strategy to
Invalidate Patents,
About
29% of U.S. patent lawsuits are conducting PTAB Trials, of which 25% of
Petitioner won (2012-2019 Lex Machina). In particular, the field of electronic communication technology, which is
rapidly developing, has had the most filings recent years.
In PTAB Trials for IT technologies, more and more East Asian prior-art with
high-technology are cited. Especially, Korea ranks first and second in the world in the ICT development
index, and has many high-tech and high-quality patents.
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