LG has been disbursing the millions it got from Apple patent payments to its employees in the forms of rewards that had sometimes reached over $1 million per person. After it disposed of its cell phone business, LG was paid patent licensing fees by Apple and one other mysterious company back in 2022.
The 890 billion won (~$635 million) in licensing fees it got were paid 90% by Apple, though, largely for standard essential patents that its iPhones couldn’t go without. Since South Korea has the so-called Invention Promotion Act that encourages creativity in the tech sector, LG’s compliance with the law has brought a windfall for over one hundred employees that have been involved in creating the technology and filing of said patents.
According to sources of local media The Elec, some of the LG employees got more than $1 million from the Apple licensing fee windfall. South Korea’s Invention Promotion Act stipulates that at least 5% of the profits from these standard essential patents should be given to the inventors and employee in the company who bothered with all the paperwork involved in protecting one’s intellectual property.
The government’s goal is to spearhead patent filings by South Korean companies, of course, and encourage innovation and creativity through the carrot approach, and LG employees have benefitted greatly, it seems.
LG Electronics, which undoubtedly made some of the quirkiest and most interesting Android phones around, couldn’t translate its innovative ideas into market success, despite that it hovered around the 10% market share in the US, a place now being usurped by the likes of Motorola. It decided to throw in the towel to the big guys like Apple and Samsung in 2021, and has since been focused on patent licensing as a regular income stream remaining from its cell phone period.
LG mainly sold patents to the Chinese juggernauts like Vivo, which needed to amass a patent portfolio to shielded themselves from litigation similar to Nokia’s parent war with Oppo that prevented it from selling its excellent phones abroad for a good while. The other lucrative revenue source like licensing fees has been more giving, as LG earned more than half a billion from Apple alone, and its employees have benefitted greatly from its largesse.