LG Receives Patents on Robotic Cleaners, Refrigerators and Smartwatches

LG Electronics may not have the largest share of consumer electronics markets, even in its home country South Korea, but the corporation has lately been a patenting juggernaut. LG was awarded the 5th most U.S. patent grants during 2013 and was one of only five companies to eclipse 3,000 patents awarded in that year; LG still played second fiddle to Samsung, which was 2nd place last year with 4,652 patents. LG actually maintains a thorough list of its patent portfolio, sorted so that a reader can easily find which LG products are using which patented technology, on its website. The corporation recently invested $4 million to form Unified Innovative Technology of Delaware, OH, which some have speculated is a move intended to protect LG’s international intellectual property interests. In early November, the company also announced a 10-year agreement with Google for global cross-licensing of patents, similar to a deal signed by Google with Samsung earlier this year.

Korean tech companies love robots. Our recent coverage of Samsung featured a bevy of robotics technologies, so we were piqued when we noticed a patent issued to its neighbor in the same field. U.S. Patent No. 8903590, which is titled Robot Cleaner and Method for Controlling the Same, protects a robot cleaner with a travel unit that responds to a travel mode command, a detection unit for detecting items to be cleaned and a control unit that generates a map for cleaning. This technology is designed to achieve a more efficient and accurate method of generating a map for cleaning within a robotic cleaner.

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12.23.14 | Patent Issues | Gene Quinn

Whirlpool Challenge To Three LG Refrigerator Patents Among The Reexamination Requests Filed Week Of 2/28/11

Here is the latest installment of Reexamination Requests from Scott Daniels, of Reexamination Alert and Practice Center Contributor….

Last year LG Electronics sued Whirlpool for selling refrigerators that infringe a series of LG patents.  Whirlpool has now replied by requesting reexamination of those patents (see inter partes Request Nos. (4), (5) & (6)).  Whirlpool has previously requested reexamination of at least four other LG refrigerator patents.  LG and Whirlpool have been in series patent infringement fights, including an ITC investigation.

There were also reexaminations requested by Google against two of the Oracle America patents in the JAVA infringement suit between the companies (see inter partes Request No. (3) and ex parte Request No. (9)).  A request was filed against another of the Intellectual Venturespatents from its case against Altera and other companies, probably by Xilinx, though the identity of the requester does appear in PAIR (see ex parte Request No. (22)).  Finally, a request was filed regarding one of the Ronald Katz telephone patents (see ex parte Request No. (3)). (more…)

03.11.11 | posts, Reexamination Requests | Stefanie Levine