Patent troll claims to own Bluetooth, scores $15.7M verdict against Samsung
Big patent trolls see court wins, twice in two weeks. Will it matter for reform? — Gordon Bremer didn't invent Bluetooth 2.0. In fact, as he admitted on the stand last week in an East Texas federal court …
Context & Ripple Effects
Gordon Bremer's $15.7M East Texas win against Samsung lands in the middle of a busy stretch for assertion firms: days later, Smartflash LLC sued Apple again over its iPhone and iPad patents ([[a:826819]]), and a mid-year study found that roughly nine in ten tech patent lawsuits in early 2015 were filed by trolls. The verdict is also the kind of headline reform advocates point to, since the plaintiff admitted on the stand he didn't invent Bluetooth 2.0.
The longer arc in the coverage runs the other direction, though: appeals courts have repeatedly unwound big first-instance wins, including an $85M Android notification verdict against Google that was overturned and Personal Audio's podcasting patent being declared invalid.
First-order effects
- Samsung owes a $15.7M judgment in a venue famous for plaintiff-friendly juries, and must decide whether to appeal or settle rather than face follow-on licensing demands across its Bluetooth-equipped device line.
- Bremer gains both cash and credibility as a repeat player, strengthening the negotiating position of his portfolio against any company shipping Bluetooth 2.0 hardware.
Second-order effects
- The playbook spreads immediately: within two weeks Smartflash re-attacked Apple with the same patents it had already litigated, showing how one courtroom win lowers the perceived risk of filing copycat suits against other deep-pocketed targets.
- Device makers' litigation budgets swell, pushing them toward settlement math even on weak patents because a single East Texas jury can cost more than a license would.
Third-order effects
- If the appellate record holds — verdicts like Google's overturned, Personal Audio invalidated — the system self-corrects only years later and at enormous defense cost, which is precisely the dynamic fueling calls for patent reform in the coverage.
- Structurally, the pattern pushes large hardware vendors to treat nuisance assertions as a recurring cost of doing business, entrenching the troll-versus-manufacturer litigation economy that the 2015 lawsuit statistics document.
The trend: Non-practicing entities are converting standards-essential technologies like Bluetooth into serial litigation campaigns, with trial wins arriving faster than the appeals process can invalidate the underlying patents.