LG Electronics has offered compensation to current and former employees for the patents they helped develop, TheElec has learned.
It marks the first time for the company to offer such compensation.
LG Electronics has currently involved in around 50 lawsuits with employees over patents, which likely spurred the move, sources said.
The company in April said it made around 800 billion won in profits from patents during the first quarter.
It had contacted employees involved in these patents __ most of which are standard essential patents __ and offered anywhere from a couple of million wons to a couple of millions of dollars.
The company didn’t share with the employees how it reached these figures, however.
From 2014 to 2020, LG Electronics filed anywhere between 3,100 to 4,600 patents in South Korea annually.
Around 1,200 to 2,000 of these were registered per year. The company is thought to file even more patents in the US every year.
Despite its exit from the mobile business last year, LG Electronics had decided to offer licenses for related patents afterward.
The South Korean electronics maker had been consistently criticized for being stingy in compensation for patents despite the high profit it makes from them.
