© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Jeff Bounds
(Feb. 16) – A small Pennsylvania technology company won a $15.7 million jury verdict against the Korean electronics maker Samsung in a patent dispute tried in Marshall.
In addition, the East Texas jury found that Rembrandt Wireless Technologies is entitled to royalties on future sales of Samsung devices that use a wireless technology called Bluetooth, which enables electronics to communicate with each other over short distances.
The royalty, which has yet to be set, applies to Bluetooth-enabled Samsung devices with what are known as enhanced data rate capability, which zips data between electronic devices faster.
For now, all Samsung devices that use Bluetooth have that capability, according to Demetrios Anaipakos, who was lead trial counsel for Rembrandt.
In addition to Samsung, Rembrandt also sued the Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry over the patent claim. BlackBerry settled in December on undisclosed terms.
The eight-person jury delivered its verdict Friday after just an hour of deliberations, Anaipakos said.
“That was the fastest deliberation in a patent case I’ve seen,” he said.
Samsung’s lead trial counsel was Jeffrey K. Sherwood, a Washington, D.C.-based partner at Dickstein Shapiro. Other firms on the Samsung team included attorneys from the New York and East Palo Alto, Calif. offices of Ropes & Gray, with the East Texas firm Siebman, Burg, Phillips & Smith on the ground in Marshall.
A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment.
Two patents were at issue in the Marshall case, Anaipakos said. In essence, both covered methods for allowing older Bluetooth-enabled electronics to communicate and swap data with newer devices that use that wireless technology.
During the weeklong trial, Anaipakos compared the underlying problem to old devices speaking one language, newer devices another. The techniques in the patents were roughly comparable to making old and new Bluetooth devices bi-lingual, thus allowing them to exchange data without a problem, Anaipakos said.
The inventor behind the intellectual property, Gordon F. Bremer, has roughly 100 issued and pending patents to his name, Anaipakos said. Rembrandt acquired the two Bluetooth patents in question from Bremer’s employer, Florida’s Paradyne Corp.
Anaipakos praised the presiding judge in the Samsung case, U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who managed to get the case from initial filing of the complaint to completed trial in less than two years.
“I’ve handled IP cases all over the country,” Anaipakos said. “The speed and efficiency with which Judge Gilstrap operates his docket is something to behold.”
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