A United States court dismissed a patent lawsuit against Samsung Electronics by Ahn Seung-ho, the former vice president of Samsung Electronics’ IP Center.
Ahn, who led Samsung Electronics’ IP Center from 2010 to 2018, left the company in July 2019 and founded Synergy IP in June 2020. Synergy IP and patent holder Techiya filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in November 2021, alleging that Samsung Electronics had unauthorizedly used Techiya’s patents for an audio recording device and a multi-microphone sound management control device in its Galaxy S20 series, Galaxy Buds, and Bixby. In February 2022, Samsung filed a countersuit against the two companies for trade secret theft and breach of fiduciary duty.
According to industry reports, on May 23, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas dismissed the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Synergy IP and Techiya LLC against Samsung regarding wireless earphones and voice recognition.
The court found that Ahn and his associates had illegally misappropriated Samsung’s confidential materials to file the lawsuit. The ruling described their behavior as “dishonest, unfair, and repugnant to the rule of law” and noted that using Samsung’s confidential information caused irreparable harm to the company.
According to the judgment, Ahn and a former coworker, a Samsung patent attorney, obtained confidential information about Techiya and used it in the lawsuit. It was also revealed that Ahn shared Samsung’s confidential Techiya status reports with PurpleVine IP, a Chinese investor in the litigation, and with Techiya’s patent litigation law firm, which used the information to file the lawsuit.
“The Techiya status reports that Ahn misappropriated were critical documents that could determine the outcome of the litigation because they contained Samsung’s strategy regarding the Techiya litigation,” said U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who specializes in patent cases.
Evidence of perjury and attempts to destroy evidence, including installing an anti-forensic app to delete relevant evidence during deposition recordings, was also found.
Ahn and others were found to have violated discovery rules by instructing a Samsung employee to leak confidential internal materials protected by attorney-client privilege during the lawsuit and receiving the leaked information within two hours.
The court concluded that Ahn’s use of Samsung’s internal confidential information to benefit his case breached his fiduciary duty to Samsung and violated the attorney-client privilege.
According to the ruling, Ahn is also under investigation by South Korean prosecutors. The court ordered that their conduct be reported to the ethics committees of the State Bar of California and New York for further action.
