Samsung reportedly drops OLED patent case against LG, just as they lock horns over eye-tracking tech

It’s difficult to keep track of all the ongoing litigation and legal battles across the technology realm, but it seems that two tech titans have finally put one feud to bed, one that dates back to 2011.

Samsung and LG’s long running feud over OLED technology simmered down last month, after the Korean companies opted against taking the litigation further. It was then revealed that Samsung and LG were to “discuss” the OLED feud this month and, as the Yonhap News Agency reports today, citing sources, Samsung has decided to drop its patent case against LG altogether.

The crux of the issue was that Samsung suspected that eleven of its researchers had leaked details of its OLED technology to LG — key components of the displays in mobile phones, tablets and TVs.

Assuming today’s report to be true, this completes a significant turnaround from the series of court orders and injunctions that emerged last year. Indeed, the latter half of 2012 saw LG serve Samsung with a patent suit, while Samsung made moves to annul seven LG patents. These actions were both been reversed last month however, as Samsung dropped its request and LG did the same with its injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

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There’s no indication as of yet whether cross-licensed OLED patents formulated part of Samsung’s decision to drop the patent suit as was initially indicated. Samsung Display Chief Executive Kim Ki-nam had previously raised the potential for patent licensing:

“Overall, we are considering cross-licensing patents. That will help the two companies compete with better products in the global market.”

One feud leads to another…

But as one feud ends, another one has seemingly begun. As we noted yesterday, LG and Samsung are now locking horns over eye-tracking patents in the wake of the feature appearing on the new Samsung Galaxy S4, which allows users to read Web pages, pause and play videos and perform other actions without their hands. A day before the Galaxy S4 was unveiled, LG also announced it would introduce an update in April to bring the scrolling feature to the Optimus G Pro.

The upshot of all this, is that LG has claimed that it applied for a number of eye-recognition technology patents back in August 2009. A company rep told the Yonhap that it will review potential patent infringement when the Galaxy S4 is finally launched next month.