Samsung has been sued for patent infringement by a company called PACid Technologies that deals with technology concerning to encryption.
The company has accused Samsung of using three of its biometric patents without licensing them. Two of the patents were filed in the US, while the third one was licensed in South Korea and all of them are related to encryption technology.
PACid has now filed a suit before the Texas Eastern District Court on April 6, which claims that the South Korean firm used three of its patents to develop the fingerprint, face and iris scanners on its flagship smartphones including the Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S6 edge,
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+, Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, Samsung Galaxy S8, and the Samsung Galaxy S8+.
The company also claims that these patents were violated by the Samsung PASS identity management service and the Samsung KNOX mobile enterprise security system. However, the suit doesn't mention a particular damage sum expected by PACid but judging by the caliber of the devices mentioned, the company must be seeking a huge sum in return.
Considering the millions of smartphones sold in the last three years since the launch of Galaxy S6, it's possible that the compensation for the lawsuit could be somewhere between $2.8 to $3 billion.
What's interesting is that PACid is regarded as a "patent troll" and has also sued Apple, Google, and Nintendo for patent infringement. In an interview with ETNews a Samsung representative said that the company is "planning to look for countermeasures after going over [the] claims made by PACid."
Since Samsung has the financial power on its side, it will surely hire the best lawyers to defend the case, while PACid has quite some experience in patent trolling. So there are possibilities that the case might be settled outside the court.
