After a year-and-a-half-long global legal battle, Samsung's patent dispute with China's Datang Mobile has finally come to an end.
According to the latest data from Westlaw, a U.S. legal search platform, the two companies have filed a joint dismissal agreement with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, and the court has declared all related lawsuits officially terminated.
The dispute began in early 2023 when CITIC Mobile Communications Technology Co., Ltd. issued an announcement regarding the subsidiary's lawsuit.
According to the announcement, Datang Mobile Communication Equipment Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of SIEMIC Mobile, and Shanghai Datang Mobile Communication Equipment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Datang Mobile, have filed a lawsuit with the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court against the dispute over infringement of invention patent rights with Samsung (China) Investment Co., Ltd. and other companies.
According to the news at that time, the patent infringement lawsuit involved 6 cases, all of which were disputes over infringement of invention patents. Each invention patent infringement dispute case involved compensation of RMB 20 million for economic losses and RMB 500,000 for reasonable expenses incurred to stop the infringement, with a total amount of RMB 123 million in all six cases.
In April 2024, the District Court of Munich, Germany, issued a first-instance judgment finding that Samsung Electronics infringed a 4G standard-essential patent owned by Datang in the mobile communication equipment it produced. Samsung filed an invalidation lawsuit against the patent related to the case during the trial, but the Munich District Court refused to stay the infringement action due to the invalidity action.
According to the judgment, Samsung is required to pay fixed compensation for almost all smartphones sold in Germany since August 20, 2021, because most of them support 4G networks; All relevant models currently circulating on the market also need to be destroyed.
However, two months after the verdict, the parties announced a settlement, ending the global lawsuit. The signing of the settlement agreement not only ended the legal dispute between the two parties, but also eliminated the risk of ban and destruction that Samsung may face due to infringement, drawing an end to this patent war.
Patent lawsuits are not uncommon among technology companies. With the gradual rise of Chinese enterprises in the field of communications, the importance of intellectual property rights and patents to support the development of enterprises has become more and more prominent.
According to data disclosed by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of 5G SEP declarations in mainland China currently accounts for 42% of the world's total.
In addition, according to the Research Report on Global 5G Standard Essential Patents and Standard Proposals (2023) released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Chinese companies account for 5 of the top 10 companies in the effective global patent family. Samsung and Datang are both in the top 10 of this ranking.
At present, in many fields, it is foreign companies that rely on their patent advantages to attack Chinese companies at a high level. However, after decades of innovation and patent accumulation, more and more Chinese companies are breaking through this situation.
In the context of the global knowledge economy, Chinese enterprises should attach great importance to the application and protection of patents, and do a solid job in the global layout of intellectual property rights through continuous innovation and research and development, so as to expand market competitive advantages, flexibly resolve market disputes, and maximize the value of intellectual property rights.