After over a decade out of the hard disk drive (HDD) market, Samsung’s recent patent acquisitions are drawing attention and sparking curiosity about the company’s future direction. Simultaneously, Samsung is navigating an increase in patent infringement lawsuits, adding new complexities to its business landscape.
Before these insights become public, our analysis of Samsung’s recent patent activities offers a glimpse into the company’s probable business strategy and potential market impact. These findings come from a thorough review of Samsung’s mergers and acquisitions, patent litigations, standard contributions, R&D investments, and technology convergence.
While this article is based on Samsung’s Patent Activity in August 2024, subscribe to our newsletter for the upcoming updates on the patent strategies driving Samsung’s next big moves.
Samsung’s Acquisition Activities Revealing their Secret Interests:
Exploring a Return to the Hard Disk Drive Market
Samsung’s recent acquisition of patents related to magnetic recording technology, a core component of hard disk drives (HDDs), is interesting. In 2011, Samsung exited the HDD market when Seagate acquired its business. However, its recent patent purchases from both Seagate and Sharp suggest a renewed interest in HDDs.
“However, rather than indicating a full-scale return to the HDD market, it’s possible that these patents are relevant to broader storage technologies, including SSDs, or could be part of a strategy to enhance data storage and compression methods across different types of storage solutions.
Given the current landscape, where a considerable percentage of the global market still relies on HDDs, Samsung’s patent acquisitions could also be aimed at maintaining a competitive edge in storage technology as the industry evolves.”
Kanav Sharma, Senior Research Analyst, GreyB
Samsung’s litigation activities:
Being targeted by NPEs in the Networking Domain
Looking at litigation data from the past 6-7 months, the networking and communication domain has seen a lot of legal activity. Samsung is facing a high number of patent infringement cases, making it one of the most sued operating companies. Several Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs) have targeted Samsung’s smartphones, filing about 8 infringement cases in the first 5 months of 2024.
Two of these cases involve lawsuits from Telsync Technologies LLC and Secure Wi-Fi LLC over infringing their WiFi patents. What’s particularly interesting is that Empire Technology Development LLC originally owned these patents before being acquired by the plaintiffs. This highlights a broader strategy where NPEs are actively trying to challenge major players like Samsung.
Further examination of Empire Technology’s patents revealed several valuable patents (such as US8948806B2, US9312976B2, US9936459B2, etc.) related to this domain. By identifying valuable patents within Empire Technology Development LLC’s portfolio, companies can preemptively acquire or license these patents to protect themselves from potential litigation.
Samsung’s Contribution to Emerging Technologies:
Leading the Charge in Wi-Fi 8 Standard Development
Samsung appears to be actively developing the WiFi-8 standard, while most other companies focus on launching WiFi-7 products. Samsung has already made 35 contributions to the 802.11bn working group (WiFi-8). Some of their contributions include technologies such as Relay operation in WiFi, Two-dimensional resource allocation, and DPS mode in APs. It will be interesting to see which company will make the most contributions to WiFi 8 in the future.
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Analysis by: Rudransh Ucharya and Kanav Sharma, Infringement Team
