Why Injunctions Matter: Lessons From the Samsung-Collision Case

What is the right to exclude worth if, after a patent owner proves infringement, the infringer can keep using the invention through years of follow on litigation?

That question is becoming increasingly important to American startups and research companies. These companies produce important technology. They invest in research, develop intellectual property and depend on licensing to commercialize what they create.

In August the Globe reported on patent infringement case Collision Communications, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. et al.,  in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. 

The importance of this patent infringement case cannot be stressed enough.

Collision Communications is a tech company that acquired signal-interference reduction patents originally developed by BAE Systems. While BAE Systems frequently partners with DARPA on defense electronics, radio frequency communications, and adaptive networking contracts, Collision Communications focuses on commercializing those acquired signal-processing portfolios, leading to major high-stakes patent enforcement litigation against major electronics manufacturers.

Collision sued Samsung in December 2023, alleging infringement of patents of unique technology that reduces signal interference in cellular wireless network communications of 4G, 5G, and Wi-Fi.

The dispute between New Hampshire-based Collision Communications and Samsung Electronics shows why an injunction against Samsung is so important.   Collision Communications had important technology that could improve the performance of mobile networks. 

In October 2025, a federal jury found that Samsung infringed asserted claims of four Collision patents, rejected Samsung’s invalidity defenses and found the infringement willful. The jury awarded Collision $445.5 million in reasonable-royalty damages.[1] 

That is a substantial award. But it answers only one question: What should Samsung pay for past patent infringement?

It doesn’t necessarily answer the other question: Collision’s technology continues to be used without Collision controlling that use. How long does the infringer-Samsung in this case-get to use the court system to continue infringing Collision’s technology?

That is why injunctions matter.

Not Every NPE Is a Patent Troll

The term NPE, non-practicing entity, has become almost synonymous in public debate with “patent troll.” That is a mistake.

There are abusive actors in the patent system. The Federal Trade Commission has studied patent-assertion entities whose business models rely on acquiring patents and pursuing licensing revenue through litigation. Its study identified significant differences among patent-assertion business models, including “Litigation PAEs” that overwhelmingly sued before securing licenses.[2] Weak patents and opportunistic lawsuits deserve scrutiny.

But NPEs are not a single species.

The FTC itself distinguished patent-assertion entities from other NPEs that primarily seek to develop and transfer technology.[2] Universities conduct research and license their discoveries. Individual inventors develop technology without building factories. Startups may spend years developing intellectual property before they have the capital or any business reason to manufacture a finished product.

Collision is an example of why the distinction matters.

Collision was formed as a telecommunications research-and-development company. It acquired intellectual property originating at BAE Systems. Collision invested heavily in research and development directed toward commercial communications technology.[3].  

That is innovation, even if Collision doesn’t manufacture smartphones.

Further infringement of patents by large corporations and continuing use of the technology through prolonged litigation is the cause of why some start-ups end up being NPEs, their technology is being stolen and their business model is destroyed.

A patent system that effectively protects only manufacturers would create a strange incentive: Invest in research, develop useful technology and obtain a patent—but don’t expect the full benefit of the patent unless you also build the product that uses it.

That isn’t how American innovation works.

The Government Has Entered the Debate

The Justice Department and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office made that point unusually clear in the Collision-Samsung litigation.

In February 2026, DOJ’s Antitrust Division and the USPTO filed a Statement of Interest addressing permanent injunctions for non-practicing patent owners.[4]

The government did not say Collision was automatically entitled to an injunction. Nor did it endorse automatic injunctions for NPEs.

It made a more important point: A patent owner’s business model should not categorically prevent it from demonstrating irreparable harm or showing that monetary damages are inadequate. The government’s filing expressly addressed whether a non-practicing patentee can demonstrate those injuries from continuing infringement and took no position on whether Collision ultimately should receive an injunction.[4]

The USPTO described a thorough evaluation of whether a patent owner is entitled to injunctive relief as “foundational to the exclusionary right a patent confers.” DOJ emphasized that preserving incentives to innovate promotes dynamic competition for innovators “both big and small.” [5]

Those aren’t abstract observations.

The fundamental bargain of the patent system includes a limited right to exclude. If a company can use patented technology first and litigate compensation later, that right risks looking less like exclusion and more like a court-imposed license.

The court’s own findings in Collision’s case illustrate the problem. On irreparable harm, Judge Rodney Gilstrap found that Collision’s loss of the design-win competition, combined with Samsung’s ongoing infringement, was sufficient to establish irreparable harm, specifically noting “the reality that Samsung continues to use the ’492 patent against Collision’s wishes.”[6] On monetary damages, the court rejected Samsung’s argument that a company that licenses its patents can necessarily be adequately compensated with money and concluded, after considering the full record, that Collision had demonstrated that monetary damages were inadequate under the second eBay factor.[6]

Those findings matter. The court ultimately denied the injunction on the remaining eBay factors, but on the two questions most directly concerned with the injury to Collision, irreparable harm and the adequacy of money damages—Collision prevailed.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Dina Kallay Delivers Remarks at the Hudson Institute Forum for Intellectual Property. In her reference to the Samsung Collision case she states: ‘Namely, there are circumstances under which a patent holder that licenses its patents can establish irreparable harm and inadequacy of monetary remedies’.

Samsung Makes the Question Hard to Ignore

Samsung is entitled to every defense and appellate right available under federal law. Vigorous litigation isn’t itself misconduct.

But that doesn’t end the inquiry.

Samsung is one of the world’s largest technology companies and a sophisticated owner of intellectual property. It understands the commercial importance of patents when those patents belong to Samsung. The harder question is what corporate responsibility requires when the patent belongs to someone else.

In Collision’s case, this isn’t merely an allegation awaiting adjudication. A federal jury heard the evidence, rejected Samsung’s invalidity defenses, found infringement and then made the additional finding that Samsung’s infringement was willful.[1] Willful infringement means that Samsung knew they were infringing.

That should sharpen the focus considerably.

Patent policy has long wrestled with the problem sometimes called “efficient infringement”: the economic incentive to use another party’s patented technology first and negotiate or litigate the price later when doing so is more advantageous than obtaining a license beforehand.

There is no public evidence establishing that Samsung maintains a formal corporate policy of efficient infringement. But Collision illustrates why the incentive deserves scrutiny. Once infringement becomes a calculable legal expense rather than conduct that can ultimately be stopped, a powerful implementer may have less incentive to negotiate before using someone else’s technology.

For a company of Samsung’s scale, that raises an uncomfortable corporate-governance question: If infringement can be reduced to a damage’s calculation and years of litigation, when does respecting another company’s patent become economically optional?

That is precisely where injunctions matter.

The legal process should protect the right to challenge a patent. It should not inadvertently create a business model in which the process itself can be used while the value of the patented technology erodes.

Patents expire. Markets move. Technology becomes obsolete. Licensing opportunities disappear. Years of litigation help ensue this.

A damages award can compensate for past use. It cannot necessarily restore years of lost control over an invention.

When a jury has already found infringement, rejected invalidity defenses and found the infringement willful, the possibility of an injunction is not some extraordinary advantage handed to an NPE.

It is what gives the right to exclude consequences.

eBay Did Not Create Second-Class Patents

The Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange rejected automatic injunctions in patent cases. A patent owner must satisfy the traditional four-factor equitable test: irreparable injury, inadequacy of monetary remedies, a balance of hardships favoring equitable relief and consistency with the public interest.[7]

But eBay rejected categorical rules.

The Court made clear that the decision whether to grant an injunction rests within a district court’s equitable discretion. In a concurrence, Justice Kennedy also recognized that some patent owners including university researchers and self-made inventors may reasonably prefer licensing their inventions rather than manufacturing products themselves.[7]

Being an NPE therefore doesn’t end the injunction inquiry.

That principle became especially significant in Collision.

The district court ultimately denied Collision’s request for a permanent injunction after applying the eBay factors. But it found that Collision established irreparable harm. The court also concluded that monetary damages were inadequate to remedy certain harms Collision identified, before determining that the remaining equitable considerations did not support the requested injunction.[6]

DOJ subsequently highlighted the significance of that ruling.

In July, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Dina Kallay specifically discussed Collision v. Samsung when explaining that patent owners that commercialize intellectual property through licensing can, under appropriate circumstances, establish irreparable injury and the insufficiency of monetary relief.[8]

That is significant.

It rejects the simplistic assumption that an NPE can always be made whole with a check.

Damages and Exclusion Are Not the Same Thing

A startup spends years and substantial capital developing technology and securing patents to protect it. Then a much larger corporation begins using that technology without a license. The startup sues.

The patent survives.

Infringement is proven.

A jury even finds the infringement willful.

Yet the larger company continues using the technology because future use can ultimately be converted into another monetary payment.

Who really controls the invention?

For a technology developer, the injury isn’t necessarily measured only by lost product sales. It can mean lost licensing leverage, lost exclusivity, lost control over commercialization and the erosion of the technology’s value while litigation continues-And ultimately, the loss of the company built around the technology.

Those losses are not easily reconstructed years later.

A licensing opportunity that disappeared cannot simply be recreated. A negotiating position weakened by years of unauthorized use cannot necessarily be restored. And a technology that has lost its competitive window cannot be made new again by calculating another royalty.

The Collision court itself recognized this problem when analyzing irreparable harm. Citing Chief Justice Roberts’s concurrence in eBay, the court acknowledged the difficulty of protecting a right to exclude through monetary remedies when those remedies permit an infringer to continue using an invention against the patent owner’s wishes.[6]

That is why an injunction isn’t merely punishment for infringement. Nor should it be automatic.

It is an equitable remedy that, when the legal requirements are satisfied, protects something damages sometimes cannot:

Control over the invention itself

For research-driven companies, startups, universities and legitimate NPEs, that distinction can determine whether a patent is an enforceable business asset or merely a claim for compensation after someone else has already decided to use the technology.

The Collision-Samsung case shows why injunctions remain an essential patent remedy. Damages can compensate a patent owner for past infringement, but they do not necessarily stop the infringer from continuing to use the technology. [4][6]” Without the meaningful possibility of an injunction, larger companies like Samsung can effectively turn another company’s patent into a license the patent owner never agreed to grant.

A patent should not merely establish the price of infringement. When the law’s requirements are met, it must also preserve the power to make infringement stop and give back control to the inventors.

Sources

[1] Collision Communications, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, No. 2:23-cv-00587-JRG. Jury verdict finding infringement of the asserted claims, rejecting Samsung’s invalidity defenses, finding willful infringement, and awarding $445,494,160 in reasonable-royalty damages. See also U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Statement of Interest of the United States of America (Feb. 27, 2026).

[2] Federal Trade Commission, Patent Assertion Entity Activity: An FTC Study (2016). The FTC examined different patent-assertion business models, including litigation-focused PAEs, and distinguished PAEs from other non-practicing entities that primarily develop and transfer technology.

[3] U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent and assignment records concerning intellectual property originating with BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration Inc. and subsequently assigned to Collision Technology LLC/Collision Communications Inc.; see also patent records concerning multiuser detection and wireless communications technology.

[4] U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division & U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Statement of Interest of the United States of America, Collision Communications, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 2:23-cv-00587-JRG (E.D. Tex. Feb. 27, 2026). The government addressed application of the eBay factors to non-practicing patent owners and argued against categorical treatment based on a patent owner’s business model, while taking no position on whether Collision ultimately should receive an injunction.

[5] U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, “Justice Department and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office File Statement of Interest Reaffirming the Importance of Incentives to Innovate” (Feb. 27, 2026). The agencies emphasized the relationship between meaningful consideration of injunctive relief, the patent right to exclude, and incentives to innovate.

[6] Collision Communications, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., No. 2:23-cv-00587-JRG, Memorandum Opinion and Order Denying Motion for Permanent Injunction (E.D. Tex. May 18, 2026). Applying the four-factor test established in eBay, Judge Rodney Gilstrap found that Collision demonstrated irreparable harm, including harm associated with its loss of the design-win competition and Samsung’s continuing use of the ’492 patent against Collision’s wishes. The court also concluded that Collision demonstrated that monetary damages were inadequate under the second eBay factor. The court ultimately denied the requested injunction after concluding that Collision had not carried its burden on the remaining equitable factors.

[7] eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006). The Supreme Court held that requests for permanent patent injunctions are governed by the traditional four-factor equitable test rather than categorical rules based on the identity or business model of the patent owner.

[8] Dina Kallay, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, remarks at the Hudson Institute Forum for Intellectual Property (July 2026). Discussing Collision v. Samsung, Kallay addressed the ability of patent owners that commercialize intellectual property through licensing to demonstrate irreparable injury and the inadequacy of monetary remedies.

Collision Communications provided the Globe background information in preparing this article.