Samsung Ends Litigation against Virginia Innovation Sciences

Case Filed: Jun 14, 2013

Case Closed: May 05, 2014

Court: Virginia Eastern District Court

Judge: Mark S. Davis

Case Summary:

Arlington, Virginia-based Virginia Innovation Sciences (VIS) filed a complaint against Samsung alleging that the consumer electronics company infringed 7 of their U.S. patents. The case came to an end recently with judgment favoring Samsung.

In line with court’s opinion on Samsung’s motion for partial summary judgment, the Court entered final judgment. The official ruling stated that plaintiff’s claims of infringement of the ‘492, '711, ’268, '381 and ‘398 patents are entered in favor of defendants and the case is dismissed without prejudice, without waiving defendant's right to reassert claims in this action.

As in Complaint:

VIS alleged that defendant infringed the patents-in-suit by making, using, offering for sale, selling and/or importing HDTV adapters and docking stations that are capable of operating in conjunction with mobile terminals to provide video content to a television. Such devices include HDMI and HDTV Smart Adapter and Smart Dock Multimedia Hub.

The complaint further added that defendants have infringed by making, using, offering for sale, selling, and/or importing smartphones and tablets that support video output using MHL and/or either DLNA and/or Samsung's AllShare software.

Some of the cited products under direct infringement were: Galaxy S4, Galaxy Victory, Galaxy Express, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and Galaxy S Relay while the products that were cited for indirect infringement included:  Ativ Odyssey, Galaxy Axiom, Galaxy Stratosphere and Galaxy Rugby Pro.

As a result of Samsung’s willful infringement, VIS said in complaint that they are liable for reasonable royalty, together with interest and costs.

Patents-in-Suit:

The patents involved in the suit are:

•    US7899492, US8050711, US8145268, US8224381 and US8417290 entitled ‘Methods, systems and apparatus for displaying the multimedia information from wireless communication networks,’ issued on Mar 01, 2011, Nov, 01, 2011, Apr 12, 2012, Jul 17, 2012 and Apr 09, 2013, respectively
•   US7957733 and US8135398 entitled ‘Method and apparatus for multimedia communications with different user terminals,’ issued on Jun 07, 2011 and Mar 13, 2012, respectively

All the patents expire[i] by Jun 24, 2025 and are assigned[ii] to VIS (source: MaxVal’s Assignment Database.)

The patents in general relate to mobile terminal signal conversion for external display and providing multimedia content to and from various different devices.

Since 2012, only two complaints were filed by VIS asserting the same patents, except the ‘290 patent defending Samsung.

See 2:13-cv-00332 for more details. To get alerts on cases filed/closed, subscribe to our Litigation Alerts.

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[i] Expected expiration date. Patent Term Estimator is a free web-based tool that automatically calculates patent terms and expiration dates for U.S. utility patents.

[ii] MaxVal offers Patent Assignment Alert service where subscribers receive email alerts when assignments relating to target applications, patents or entities of interest are recorded.