IMO. The Samsung cash settlement may be the lowest to date. e.Digital's phrasing choice in the PR hints at that.
Under the terms of the confidential agreement, Samsung obtained a license and release on e.Digital’s foreign and domestic patent rights, including the Company’s Flash-R™ patent portfolio, and e.Digital obtained a license and release on certain Samsung patents. e.Digital also received a one-time licensing fee.
The primary consideration e.Digital received seems to be a license and release on certain Samsung patents. The fact that e.Digital "also" received a one-time licensing fee seems to be secondary.
If the one-time fee was substantial, I would expect e.Digital to state that first before mentioning the license and release on certain Samsung patents. It seems to be primarily cross-licensing with a nominal license fee that e.Digital can keep under wraps until it comes out in the financial statements.
This is what I expected as the case did not seem to be going well for DM/EDIG. They had to drop the two "technology" patents early on and made many revisions to their PICs (preliminary infringement contentions) due to multiple errors/insufficient investigation. Samsung had a pending motion to strike the PIC changes and DM may have been afraid that Samsung would prevail on the motion.
The way this case unfolded is embarrassing for DM/EDIG. Future defendants will certainly review the court filings and see how poorly prepared e.Digital was. It seems to show that e.Digital just filed broad infringement contentions with the goal of early, nuisance value settlements. When one of the defendants decided to call their bluff, half of the patents were quickly dismissed with prejudice and e.Digital proved it didn't have reliable infringement contentions on the remaining two.
DM has received over $4 million in easy contingency fees from the first 6 settlements for what likely amounted to very little work, so I'm sure they'd like to continue the gravy train of nuisance settlements as long as possible. However, now that they have seen how little substance e.Digital actually has to back up its infringement claims, it will be interesting to see how aggressively they pursue additional actions and if they will include all 4 patents.
