The plaintiff asked for $30M in damages initially

Feb 16, 2015 08:03 GMT  ·  By

Big companies like Microsoft, Apple, Samsung and Google have always battled for technology, and when not at war with each other, they are trying to gather as many patents as possible that would give them even the smallest advantage over their rivals.

However, in the last couple of years, these companies understood that there was an even bigger threat out there that might claim their money for infringing on various technologies: patent trolls.

These companies do not innovate or discover new technologies, instead they purchase patents from other companies that do that, in the hope that they will be useful to someone in the not-so-distant future.

Something similar happened in the last couple of months when a company called Rembrandt Wireless sued Samsung for infringing on one of its Bluetooth patents.

The plaintiff asked the court for no less than $31.9M (€28M) in damages, which is a huge amount in comparison with the advantages that the technology Samsung infringed upon offered users.

The Bluetooth EDR technology costs Samsung quite a lot

This is probably one of the reasons US District Court has decided that Samsung will have to pay Rembrandt Wireless only $15.7M (€13.75M) in damages.

According to Rembrandt Wireless, Samsung infringed on a patent related to a “system and method of communication using at least two modulation methods.”

The plaintiff claims Samsung infringed the one or more of its patents by making, using, selling or offering for sale Bluetooth EDR (enhanced data rate) devices, which they argue is “the heart” of the patented technology in suit.

Obviously, Samsung has denied these allegations, but wasn’t capable of proving proof that Rembrandt’s patents are invalid. As the South Korean company points out, about 24,000 companies believe Bluetooth technology should be shared, but “obviously, Rembrandt is not part of that, and they’re taking advantage of that.”