LG Electronics wins patent dispute in U.S. By Yoon Sung-won
LG Electronics, the nations’ second-largest handset maker, has won an appeals case against patent firm Multimedia Patent Trust (MPT) in the United States.
LG said on Friday the U.S. Court of Appeals confirmed a lower court ruling that LG Electronics did not infringe on MPT’s patent right.
“We welcome the court decision,” an LG Electronics official said. “We will confront patent trolls head-on in the future.”
The District Court of Southern District of California handed down the original ruling in February.
MPT, a subsidiary of French telecommunicativon company Alcatel-Lucent, is a non-practicing entity (NPE) that makes money from patent royalties and from patent infringement lawsuits.
It sued LG Electronics in late 2010, arguing the handset maker should pay $910 million for infringing two patents related to the video compression technology used in LG’s 69 handsets models sold in the U.S. market at that time. Some are no longer available, LG said.
The “Chocolate,” a feature model that sold more than 15 million global units between 2005 and 2007, was included in the 69 models.
The victory was LG Electronics’ third this year following separate cases in February and May.
The company was found not guilty in a lawsuit filed by Technology Properties Limited (TPL), an NPE, at the International Trade Commission (ICT) in February. In the lawsuit, TPL claimed LG Electronics had infringed on a patent related to an application processor.
In April, LG also won a legal dispute with another patent company InterDigital at the ICT regarding a patent fee.
In the U.S., patent holders can seek compensation of up to three times the amount of damage an intentional patent infringement has caused. For that reason, patent trolls demand high patent fees from companies or it sues them for infringement.
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