A new lawsuit alleges that the wireless charging technology used by Samsung’s various smartphones has been stolen from a U.S. company called NuCurrent.
The lawsuit was submitted to the court last month. NuCurrent alleges that in 2015, the company was invited to present its wireless charging technology to Samsung engineers and executives so that Samsung could consider whether it could be adopted in future smartphone models.
During the show, NuCurrent shared a series of solutions and patented designs to improve the wireless charging performance of the Galaxy S6.
The entire show needed to comply with a confidentiality agreement, but NuCurrent alleged that Samsung did not enter into a cooperation agreement with the company but decided to steal NuCurrent’s technology and apply it later.
The lawsuit wrote: “Samsung did not cooperate with NuCurrent. Instead, it stole NuCurrent’s intellectual property without any notice and permission and then deployed it to Samsung’s new smartphones, including the Galaxy S7 and S8.”
The lawsuit also said that in order to demonstrate the technology, NuCurrent provided Samsung with two wireless charging coils that perform better than Samsung’s own design.
NuCurrent allowed Samsung engineers to inspect its patented design and further provided Samsung engineers and executives with information on coil design, and why “NuCurrent coils outperform Samsung.”
In the months following the show, Samsung and NuCurrent continued to exchange information. The lawsuit stated: “Under the confidentiality agreement, Samsung began to routinely request NuCurrent to provide its wireless charging expertise and provide new samples.”
In early 2016, Samsung’s chief technology officer even personally visited NuCurrent’s office in Chicago to meet with the company’s representatives.
In the end, NuCurrent began to suspect that Samsung was not interested in closing the deal.
“In the spring of 2016, NuCurrent began to doubt whether this relationship would become a commercial application. NuCurrent has contributed a lot of time and resources to these projects under the confidentiality agreement but has made progress in cooperation with Samsung. May 2016 NuCurrent was invited to speak at a conference held by Samsung at Mountain View, California, but NuCurrent was frustrated because of Samsung’s lack of commitment and investment in the project. NuCurrent reminded Samsung that the two companies had not made any commercial progress.”
In short, NuCurrent believes that Samsung is only pretending to be interested in their technology, but it is actually just to steal the company’s intellectual property. NuCurrent requested the court to prohibit the sale of Galaxy S7 and S8, and asked Samsung to make compensation and pay legal fees.
Samsung has been known for stealing technologies and was sued for it as well. It could be that Samsung discovered the new coils by themselves with their R&D. Samsung is yet to comment on this whole fiasco.
