On March 31, 2025, Judge Oetken granted summary judgment for Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and certain of its subsidiaries (“Samsung”) in an infringement suit brought against it by Dynamics Inc. (“Dynamics”). Dynamics Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 19-cv-6479, Dkt. No. 171 (S.D.N.Y. March 31, 2025).
Dynamics brought claims against Samsung for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 8,827,153 (the ‘153 Patent). Id. at 1. The ‘153 Patent relates to “magnetic secure transmission” of credit card data wirelessly through a traditional magnetic stripe card reader. Id. at 2. The portions of credit card data “stored on magnetic stripes are called ‘tracks.’” Id. at 2. Samsung devices emulate the function of magnetic stripes by assembling “‘proxy credit card information’ from which track data may be assembled at the time of a transaction.” Id. at 3-4. As a security measure, the proxy credit card information alone was “‘insufficient to execute a payment transaction’ unless combined with certain ‘data . . . created only at the time of a transaction.’” Id. at 3. In other words, Samsung devices did not store track data to be used in the future but generated new track data each and every time a transaction was initiated.
In its ruling, the Court considered “determinative” whether Samsung’s real-time processing of data constitutes the claimed “‘retriev[al] from a memory’ of that data.” Id. at 7. The Court found it did not.
The Court relied on its prior constructions of “retrieved” and “memory.” Id. at 8. During claim construction, Dynamics proposed that the “ordinary meaning of memory encompasses both persistent storage (e.g., a hard drive) and transitory storage” such as random access memory (RAM). Id. at 9. The Court rejected Dynamics’ proposal given the differences between persistent and transitory storage; persistent storage permits the retrieval of something previously created, whereas transitory storage permits the generation of new information. Id. Because the critical question was whether Samsung’s technology “retrieved” tracks from memory, the Court concluded that the ‘153 Patent did not encompass use of transitory storage. Id. at 10.
The Court also determined that “Dynamics effectively conceded this argument during Inter-Partes Review (“IPR”) proceedings.” Id. Dynamics, in distinguishing prior art (the “Shoemaker Patent”), “argued in IPR proceedings that ‘“[r]ather than store any tracks in memory, Shoemaker instead stores various, discrete sets of data that it then utilizes to build each track as the track is called for.’” Id. at 11. It further “emphasized the importance of Shoemaker’s tracks being ‘reconfigurable from transaction to transaction’ rather than ‘statically implemented.’” Id.
Accordingly, because “the ordinary meaning of ‘retrieved from a memory’ requires persistent storage,” and Dynamics had failed to adduce evidence that “Samsung’s products persistently store complete tracks of payment data . . . outside of the processing of a given transaction,” it failed to raise a genuine dispute of material fact.
