Defendant

Synergy IP Corporation

1 case as defendant.

Cases
1
Active
0
1 closed
Filed
2022
Top venue
PTAB
1 case
Also appears as a plaintiff in 1 case → View as plaintiff

Company profile

I'll research this entity before writing.

Synergy IP Corporation ("Synergy") is a closely held South Korean IP monetization company formed in June 2020, headquartered at 5th floor, Maeheon-ro 54-1, Seocho-gu, Seoul 06770. According to a court declaration by CEO Dr. Seung-Ho Ahn, Synergy is privately held, maintains no U.S. office, has never had U.S.-resident employees, and its identified personnel are Ahn (CEO), Sungil Cho (director), and Sun Hwa Mun (finance manager); it is co-owned by Ahn, Cho, and a third Korean individual. No reliable public revenue, headcount, or valuation figures exist.

Operations: Synergy is not an operating company and sells no products. Its stated business is "IP transactions and other IP-related business such as licensing," including licensing and enforcement work on behalf of third-party patent owners. It obtained an exclusive license to Staton Techiya LLC's earphone/earbud patent portfolio, and in November 2020 wrote to Samsung purporting to represent Blaze Mobile in licensing negotiations over Samsung Pay/Samsung Ads patents. Unified Patents classifies Synergy as an NPE (patent assertion entity).

Litigation posture: Both tracked appearances arise from a single campaign. Synergy was a co-plaintiff with Staton Techiya in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division (2:21-cv-00413, filed Nov. 2021; 2:22-cv-00053, filed Feb. 14, 2022; consolidated), asserting 14 patents. On the defense side, it was initially named a real party-in-interest in Samsung's PTAB inter partes reviews (e.g., IPR2022-00281, -00369, -00388) before Techiya removed it from the mandatory notices. The plaintiff-side filings sit in the historically plaintiff-friendly Marshall Division.

Context: The suits targeted Samsung's Galaxy Buds and Bixby-enabled smartphones. Samsung counterclaimed for trade-secret misappropriation, breach of fiduciary duty, and civil conspiracy against Synergy, Ahn, and Cho; those counterclaims were severed and stayed pending a Korean criminal investigation. Synergy was dropped as a plaintiff in May 2024, with its claims dismissed with prejudice. Techiya's infringement claims were dismissed with prejudice in May 2024 on unclean-hands grounds (appeal No. 24-1917). In February 2026, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Ahn to three years in prison for leaking Samsung confidential materials.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al. v. Staton Techiya, LLC et al.

Final Written Decision issued; appealed
Docket:
IPR2022-01106
Filed:
2022-06-09
Terminated:
2024-01-05
Patents:11039259

Samsung petitioned for inter partes review of U.S. 11,039,259. The Board instituted trial on January 9, 2023, and issued a Final Written Decision on January 5, 2024; the decision was appealed to the Federal Circuit.