Technology giant Samsung Electronics infringed on a California-based startup company’s five wireless charging patents, a federal jury in Marshall decided Friday.
The jury awarded Mojo Mobility more than $192.1 million in damages after deliberating about six hours over two days in Chief U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap’s court.
“We’re very thankful to the jury’s attention and close analysis of the case and we’re very pleased that they came to the conclusion that they did on the facts and the issues,” McKool Smith lawyer Steven J. Pollinger, who represents Mojo, said to The Texas Lawbook.
Throughout the trial, McKool Smith lawyers told jurors Mojo founder Afshin Partovi was inspired while vacationing with his family and “a jumbled mess of chargers and wires” to create a wireless charging device for cell phones and other products. Partovi formed Mojo in 2005 and began filing applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2006.
By 2007, Samsung had initiated discussions with Mojo and requested information about Mojo’s technology, Pollinger told jurors. Mojo, hoping to generate business with Samsung, provided prototypes and technical information and sought a royalty of about $2 per device.
Samsung ultimately ended discussions because the company did not want to pay Mojo, Pollinger said. In 2015, Samsung launched a smartphone that utilized the technology provided by four of the patents at issue in the case, Pollinger said. Partovi filed his lawsuit in 2022.
At issue in the trial were a total of eight claims detailed among five patents. Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone, smartwatch, earbud case and trio wireless charging pad are among the products that infringe on Mojo’s patents, Pollinger said.
The jury found Samsung willfully infringed on at least one of the asserted claims.
Mojo’s lawyers had asked the jury to award more than $303 million and to give Mojo a running royalty. The jury instead opted to award damages in a lump sum.
Samsung, who maintained it did not infringe on Mojo’s patents, had asserted the patents were invalid. The jury rejected Samsung’s assertion and found the patents to be valid in its verdict form.
“It was a jury’s decision to make and we certainly respect the way they came to their conclusion,” Pollinger said. “It’s not everything we asked for, but it’s a great day for Mojo Mobility.”
Paul Hastings’ lawyers, who led the legal team for Samsung, declined to comment. The company did not immediately respond to The Lawbook’s request for comment.
At trial, Paul Hastings partner Robert Unikel said Samsung engineers developed its technology as a result of their own “hard labor” and maintained the company did not infringe on Mojo’s patents.
Unikel pointed to a USPTO patent application Samsung filed in 2006 that resulted from a 2005 Korean application describing its own technology, as well as the company’s published research about wireless charging for cell phones before Mojo was formed.
Unikel told jurors there were key differences between Samsung’s and Mojo’s technologies — and that Mojo’s did not work in actual products.
“Mojo’s designs simply were not ready for commercial products,” Unikel said in opening statements.
Unikel also argued Mojo’s asking price was way too high. In 2015, an expert hired by Mojo analyzed its licensing options and concluded that Mojo stood to gain royalty rates between 5 cents and 20 cents per unit if it further developed its technology. With that information, the jury should not award more than $13.2 million if it found all five patents were infringed, Unikel said.
Jurors heard testimony over four days beginning Sept. 6. Partovi testified first and was on the stand for about five hours over two days. McKool Smith principal Jennifer Leigh Truelove said Partovi’s story likely resonated with the jury.
“I think at the end of the day, he won the case,” Truelove said. “A lot of what we do is just getting in front of a jury and conveying the story.”
Much of the testimony throughout the trial was sealed to protect intellectual property. Pollinger said his team’s approach to presenting the “highly technical” case was to start at a high level and then dive into the details. He also credited credible witnesses for the jury’s verdict.
“Witness credibility is a big part of this,” Pollinger said. “We tried to point out that the arguments the other side was making were not credible … and they didn’t align with common sense.”
Mojo Mobility is also represented by Christopher Paul McNett, George Theodore Fishback Jr., Kyle N. Ryman, Charles E. Fowler Jr., Kenneth Scott, Kevin Lee Burgess, Neil Vasant Ozarkar, Ryan Bradley McBeth and Sam F. Baxter of McKool Smith.
Samsung is also represented by Allan M. Soobert, David Valente, Elizabeth Louise Brann, Igor Victor Timofeyev, James V. Razick, Jason Mikus, John Anthony Cotiguala, Matthias Andreas Kamber, Sasha Vujcic and Soyoung Jung of Paul Hastings, Andrew Thompson Gorham, James Travis Underwood and Melissa Richards Smith of Gillam & Smith and George Philip Cowden of Cowden Law Firm.
The case is Mojo Mobility Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al., No. 2:22-cv-00398-JRG-RSP.