Samsung Electronics Co. has spent more than 1 trillion won (US$898.1 million) this year in patent royalties, regulatory data showed Tuesday. 
   
The world's biggest smartphone and memory chip maker paid a total of 1.38 trillion won in the January-September period, the largest amount it spent for patent fees since 2010, its filings submitted to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) showed. 
   
The tech giant spent 754.3 billion won in the first quarter, followed by 620.9 billion won and 10 billion won in the second and third quarter of this year, respectively. 
  
The high patent royalties in the first two quarters coincide with Samsung Electronics' big cross-licensing deals with global IT companies. 
   
Samsung renewed the patent-sharing agreement with U.S. Rambus Inc. in January for another 10 years and inked a fresh deal with Cisco Systems Inc. in February. In the following months, it signed similar deals with Google Inc. and Ericsson AB. 
   
In 2010, Samsung paid the largest sum so far of a combined 1.82 trillion won to Eastman Kodak Co., Sharp Corp. and Rambus for patent royalties.  
   
The South Korean tech behemoth signed patent deals with Sony Corp., Toshiba Corp. and IBM Corp. between 2003 and 2004, during which it spent about 1.4 trillion won for royalties each year, the filings said. (Yonhap)