Spansion, Kodak file patent suits against Samsung

Spansion and Kodak slammed Samsung with two separate patent infringement lawsuits Monday.

Spansion, one of the world's largest suppliers of flash memory chips, on Monday announced it has filed two patent infringement complaints against Samsung with the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware.

Spansion is seeking the exclusion from the U.S. market of more than 100 million MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras, and other consumer electronics devices containing Samsung's allegedly infringing flash memory components.

The complaint also seeks an injunction and treble damages for alleged patent violations relating to Samsung flash memory that Spansion says has accounted for more than $30 billion in Samsung's global revenues since 2003.

Flash memory is found in virtually all electronic devices and is one of the largest segments of the semiconductor industry, with nearly $130 billion in total revenues since 2000.

The Spansion patents named in the lawsuits are fundamental to floating gate technology, "which is the foundation for approximately 90 percent of the flash memory market," according to Spansion.

The chipmaker is also targeting MirrorBit, a "charge-trapping technology" that represents a growing share of the flash memory market and is expected to replace floating gate technology in the future. Flash memory companies including Samsung have publicly announced their plans to transition to charge-trapping type technologies for their future generation products, according to Spansion.

The acquisition of Saifun appears to be one of the driving forces behind these lawsuits. "The acquisition of Saifun Semiconductor earlier this year expanded Spansion's IP portfolio and was a key milestone in Spansion's strategy to create a major licensing business, and generate new streams of significant revenue with very high margins," the company said.

Spansion also listed the "manufacturers of downstream products" containing Samsung's infringing devices in its ITC complaint. Companies named in the ITC case include: Samsung, Apple, Asus, Kingston, Lenovo, PNY, RIM, Sony, Sony-Ericsson, and Transcend.

The Kodak actions allege that both Samsung and LG camera phones infringe Kodak digital camera patents. The patents in question cover technology related to image capture, compression, and data storage and a method for previewing motion images, Kodak said.

Kodak on Monday filed suit against Samsung and LG in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, as well as in the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Kodak's District Court complaints request compensation for damages resulting from the companies' infringement, and both the District Court and ITC actions seek injunctions prohibiting Samsung and LG from further importation and sale of products cited in the complaints. Kodak did not disclose the amount of damages it is pursuing.

Kodak has licensed its imaging patents to several leading technology companies including: MEI/Panasonic, Motorola, Nokia, Olympus, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, Sony Ericsson, and others.

[Zandora777]

Kodak can't build anything worthwhile so it has become a patent troll. "Licensing" is another word for capitulating before the patent gun. Not new though, Kodak already extorted 900 million or so from Sun over Java a few years back. It's a shame.

[why do i need a name?]

let's see here:

you spend millions of dollars inventing things that are interesting and bring a competitive advantage to you
your dishonest competitors use your inventions against you in the market place
those who are honest and have taken licenses insist that you enforce the patents to level the playing field
Some vendors flip you the bird saying that they aren't going to take a license after years of negotiation


And Kodak is supposed to stand on the side and let people who use their technology have their way?


BTW, your numbers on Java are way off. Read the literature. But again, the other parties that decided to take the licenses to the technology don't want Sun to get a free ride. Just because Sun decided to bet the farm in court doesn't mean that Kodak was any less righteous in its claims.

[Zandora777]

Intellectual property is an oxymoron. The concept that you can "own" ideas is silly and artificial and is akin to "thought police". Most companies "impinging" upon patents invented the idea separately or in parallel, as opposed to "stealing it." So I innovated a week later than you did... So you should be able to sue me? Patents probably served an (arguable) purpose 100 years ago when technology moved very slowly, but today they are an anachronism that chokes innovation. Especially software patents. Do you expect engineers writing algorithms on the fly in order to solve immediate problems to have to check their code against billions of patents out there? If you come up with a good idea, you can either 1) operationalize it better than anyone else, especially since you had it "first", or 2) Keep it a secret and sell your idea to someone else who can operationalize it. If you can't do either of those things, then you don't deserve to make money on it. "Inventing" something first gives you a first-to-market advantage, which should be all you need. Good ideas are a dime a dozen, whereas operational excellence is rare. Take Apple as an example of a successful operationalizer. Nothing they do has any "secret sauce" they just put it all together in a package that is better than anyone else's. They don't need patents to succeed. Also, you will note that the only companies suing over patents are typically the ones that are failing due to other reasons. Spansion's problems are not due to people ripping off their patents. Kodak is failing not because other people copied them, but because they are overloaded with bureaucracy, can't operationalize good products, and can't get out of their own way. They could have most of Corbis/Flickr/Nikon/HP/etc businesses if they had known what they were doing, but they don't, and that has nothing to do with patents. They are now crying because inept bloated management with bad ideas drove them into the ground and their competitors ate them alive as they were too slow to fully adopt the digital model. "But we invented the digital camera!" Someone else would have been right behind them if they hadn't. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Yeah, they invented a lot of the core principles, but they screwed it up, and thank God that we have more than one vendor to choose from. But all those other vendors pay Kodak for every digcam they make, which is the only reason Kodak isn't totally dead yet. But they will continue to invest that money in stupid places, and when their patents run out in a few years you will see them slide into oblivion, like they probably should. Capitalism is darwinian, and so it should be.