Patent wars between large companies are nothing new to us. Quite often, we hear that Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, Nokia or BalackBerry accuse one of its competitors to use patented technologies without paying the appropriate license fees. This time, the PACid Technologies company appeared as the prosecutor, who believes that Samsung infringes 3 patents of the American company. Solutions protected by patent law are to be used in Samsung Pass and Samsung KNOX systems implemented in the latest Korean flagship smartphones.
When we hear that some less-known company accuses one of the technological giants, we immediately think that this is another so-called patent trolling. This practice consists in buying financial rights to a given patent in order to later call individual companies to pay back overdue licensing fees. A good example of the fight against patent trolling can boast of Kaspersky Lab. Lawyers representing the creators of the Russian anti-virus program proved before the court that Wetro Lan company wanted to extort $10,000 under the pretext of patent fees, which describes the principle of firewalls created in the 90s. However, in the case of PACid Technologies, we are dealing with a completely different situation. This time, we have a lawsuit coming from an entity conducting research in the field of security.
PACid Technologies is demanding $2.8 billion from Samsung
The petition concerns the infringement of three patents, two of which were registered in the United States and the third in South Korea. PACid Technologies believes that Samsung has used patent-protected solutions to implement security solutions, i.e. Pass and KNOX, that work with the biometric security features used by Koreans. The suit applies to the following smartphones: Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S6 edge, Samsung Galaxy S6 edge +, Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 +.
The PACid Technologies company focuses its activities around work on new solutions in the field of security and patenting new ideas. However, it does not deal with the production of systems using patented technologies. The business model used here assumes that the company will be kept from license fees for legally protected solutions. Therefore, some large corporations consider PACid Technologies to be a patent troll, and they simply do not pay appropriate fees.
