ANSAN, South Korea — (BUSINESS WIRE) — February 20, 2018 — On February 20, 2018, Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (“Seoul”) announced that Seoul has won the patent invalidity litigation action that was filed against Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. (“Everlight”) in the United Kingdom.
Everlight’s patent, EP (UK) 1169735, which was invalidated as a result of Seoul’s suit, relates to an LED package structure for thermal dissipation. Everlight purchased this patent from a U.S. company in 2017. Recently, Everlight filed a patent infringement litigation based on a foreign counterpart of this patent against its competitor, Bridgelux, Inc., in a U.S. federal court.
Last year, Seoul filed an invalidation litigation against this Everlight patent in the Patent Court of the United Kingdom. After intensive proceedings in the UK court, Everlight abandoned its defense and acknowledged in the court proceeding that its patent is invalid and that it is responsible for reimbursing Seoul for its litigation costs.
On February 14, 2018, based on Everlight’s admissions, the UK Patent Court issued an order declaring that Everlight’s patent should be revoked. The Court also ordered that Everlight must pay approximately $1 million dollars (£712,247.10) in litigation costs to Seoul based upon Everlight’s stipulation.
This victory represents one of the key tenets of Seoul’s IP strategy – preventing an abuse of patents that should never have been granted by pre-emptively invalidating such patents.
Seoul has also taken the offensive in its IP enforcement to prevent infringement of its own patent rights. Currently, Seoul is enforcing certain of its patent rights against a distributor of Everlight LED products. During the past year, Seoul has launched two patent infringement lawsuits in Germany against Mouser Electronics (“Mouser”), a global distributor of Everlight LED products. In addition, Seoul recently filed a new patent litigation against Mouser for the sale of allegedly infringing Everlight products in Italy. Following SSC’s latest enforcement action in Italy, Mouser appears to have removed all Everlight products from its distribution list of products worldwide.
About Seoul Semiconductor:
Seoul
Semiconductor develops and commercializes light emitting diodes
(LEDs) for automotive, general illumination, specialty lighting, and
backlighting markets. As the fourth-largest LED manufacturer globally,
Seoul Semiconductor holds more than 12,000 patents, offers a wide range
of technologies, and mass produces innovative LED products such as
SunLike – delivering the world’s best light quality in a next-generation
LED enabling human-centric lighting optimized for circadian rhythms;
WICOP – a simpler structured package-free LED which provides market
leading color uniformity, cost savings at the fixture level with high
lumen density and allows design flexibility; NanoDriver Series – the
world’s smallest 24W DC LED Drivers; Acrich, the world's first
high-voltage AC-driven LED technology developed in 2005, includes all AC
LED-related technologies from chip to module and circuit fabrication, as
well as multi-junction technology (MJT); and nPola, a new LED product
based on GaN-substrate technology that achieves more than ten times the
output of conventional LEDs. UCD constitutes a high color gamut display
which delivers more than 90% NTSC.
For more information about Seoul Semiconductor, please visit http://www.seoulsemicon.com
# Trademarks
Wicop and Acrich are trademarks of Seoul
Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
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