14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has recently been sued by one of its employees for allegedly failing to provide proper compensation for patents that the company used in its legal war against long-time rival Apple.
Even though the name of the researcher hasn’t been disclosed, reports coming from South Korean media indicate that Samsung is being asked to pay 200 million won (approximately $184,000) in compensation, though the demands could be increased up to 500 million won depending on how the lawsuit advances.
The Investor writes that the patents cover “ways to encode and decode the transmission rate of multiple access communication systems,” and were the subject of a long dispute between Apple and Samsung a few years ago. Samsung eventually won the lawsuit using the patents invented by its worker, with the US International Trade Commission ruling that Apple was the one guilty of infringement.
Samsung says the employee overvalues the patents
It’s not clear if the patents made their way to any devices launched by Samsung, but the company says that they “barely contributed to the firm’s sales and profits,” adding that its researcher does nothing more than to “excessively overstate their value.”
On the other hand, the unnamed employee explains that he developed no less than 1654 patents for Samsung, being required by the company to be part of the lawsuit against Apple in 2013.
“During the legal battle, Samsung asked me to support the case but after winning the case, the firm has never mentioned the name of the inventor and given me due compensation or promotion,” the employee was quoted as saying.
Lawsuits like this typically take several years to come to a conclusion, but it’s very likely a settlement will be reached, especially because a legal dispute would do more harm to Samsung’s image in the long term.