MARSHALL — California-based startup company Mojo Mobility, which claims to have been an early pioneer of wireless charging devices, is attempting to persuade an East Texas jury this week that South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics is infringing on five of its patents.
McKool Smith lawyers representing Mojo Mobility and its founder, Afshin Partovi, are seeking more than $300 million from Samsung. The trial began Friday before Chief U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap in Marshall and is expected to conclude this week.
According to Mojo’s lawyers, the Samsung Galaxy smartphone, smartwatch, earbud case and trio wireless charging pad are among the products that infringe on Mojo’s patents. The inventions at issue in the lawsuit are seen in eight claims of five patents, McKool Smith lawyers said.
“It’s really cool how it works in Samsung’s products. It’s done using Dr. Partovi’s inventions, Mojo’s inventions,” McKool Smith lawyer Steven J. Pollinger told jurors in opening statements.
“But what’s not cool is that Samsung hasn’t paid Mojo. That’s not cool. That’s wrong.”
Partovi formed Mojo Mobility in 2005 and filed patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office beginning in 2006, Pollinger said.
Samsung and Mojo entered into talks in 2007, with Samsung requesting information about Mojo’s technology and suggesting the two companies could do business together, Pollinger said.
Partovi supplied Samsung with prototypes and product samples multiple times before Samsung concluded in 2013 that it would not accept a business model under which it paid Mojo, Pollinger said. Partovi had sought a royalty of about $2 per device, lawyers said.
In 2015, Samsung introduced 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.
“Samsung wanted Mojo’s technology but was unwilling to pay for it,” Pollinger said.
But Samsung and other companies had researched and developed wireless charging for cell phones years before Partovi formed Mojo, said Robert Unikel of Paul Hastings, who represents Samsung.
Samsung released its first wireless charging device in 2011, Unikel said in his opening statement. Samsung also filed a U.S. patent application in 2006 that stemmed from a Korean application filed in 2005 describing the company’s own wireless charging for cell phones, Unikel said.
Unikel told jurors there are key differences between Mojo’s technology and Samsung’s, and Mojo’s did not work in actual products.
“Mojo’s designs simply were not ready for commercial products, and we conveyed that time and time again to Mojo at the time to see if they could fix those problems,” Unikel said.
Mojo has yet to sell or license a commercial product using its technology, Unikel said.
In 2015, an expert hired by Mojo to analyze its licensing options concluded that Mojo stood to gain royalty rates between 5 cents and 20 cents per unit if it further developed its technology, Unikel said.
“So when Mojo says in this trial that it’s entitled to more than $300 million in damages from Samsung at rates of $1.75 to $2.50 per device, that simply makes no sense in light of the facts in the real world,” Unikel told jurors.
Mojo Mobility is also represented by Christopher Paul McNett, George Theodore Fishback Jr., Kyle N. Ryman, Charles E. Fowler Jr., Jennifer Leigh Truelove, 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.