LG Innotek sells over 100 patents to Irish patent trolls

Apparently in preparation for the exit from the smartphone industry, the LG subsidiary Innotek has sold numerous US patents to an Irish company. The package contains 95 issued and 28 pending patents, primarily concerned with wireless charging technology. First, the South Korean industry paper had The Elec reports on the sale of the patents, which was processed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in February. The patents are now owned by an Irish company called Scramoge Technology. It is a patent troll by the Dublin-based company Atlantic IP Services, which is financed, among other things, by the hedge fund company Magnetar Capital. Atlantic IP includes other patent trolls such as Sola’s OLED, which was on trial in March Samsung had won US $ 62.7 million for alleged patent infringement. Neodron Ltd., which is also part of Atlantic IP Services. entered into another patent dispute with Samsung and LG Eletronics, a sister company of LG Innotek, in March settled out of court.

One address, many trolls

Patent trolls do not produce their own products, but earn their money in court. According to the newspaper The Irish Times In addition to Atlatnic IP Services and Scramoge Technology, other patent trolls such as Data Scape, Aris Technologies, Sonrai Memory and Arigna Technology share the same address in Dublin. LG Innotek is a subsidiary of the LG Group, which also includes electronics manufacturer LG Electronics. The now Patents assigned to Scramoge Technology were originally registered in the US between 2011 and 2016.

LG’s farewell in installments

LG announced its exit from the smartphone business on Monday. LG has been outsourcing the design process and development of smartphones to external companies for years. In January, an internal memo finally became known in which LG boss Kwon Bong-seok announced extensive changes in the smartphone business, which had been lossy for years. LG has now justified the end of its smartphone division with its strong competition: In the analyst lists of smartphone sales, LG has been behind companies such as Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi under “Other” for years. Last year, LG only shipped 23 million smartphones, less than a tenth of the number of market leader Samsung. The electronics manufacturer from South Korea wants to concentrate on business areas such as smart home and B2B platforms in the future. LG will still produce cell phones until the end of June in order to meet contracts with partners. (there)