Large LED companies are increasingly turning to strategies focused on filing patent infringement lawsuits against competitors, Korean LED giant Seoul Semiconductor has become the latest company to take legal action against 29 firms worldwide for infringing backlight, filament, LED chip and package patents, reported Business Korea.
Some of the companies named in its patent infringement suit included seven U.S. companies, including Feit Electric, three European companies including Redvan, 15 Chinese companies including Skyworth, and four Taiwanese companies including AOT were mentioned.
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Seoul Semiconductor CEO Lee Jeong-hoon. (Seoul Semiconductor/LEDinside) |
The types of technologies that infringed Seoul Semiconductor patents included LED TVs, smartphone flash, LED filament light bulbs, and other chip and package patents, such as Wafer Level Integrated Chip on PCB (Wicop) and Acrich Multi-Junction Technology (MJT) for high power voltage applications.
In Taiwan, Seoul Semiconductor filed a patent infringement lawsuit against AOT back in 2006 and won the legal battle in both Taiwan and Korea’s Supreme Court. However, AOT circumvented the court’s ruling. Despite closing its authorized dealer in Korea, it was still selling patent infringed products by changing the product part numbers and similar products.
Seoul Semiconductor has a reputation in the tech industry for being super tough in protecting its patents, reported Money DJ. In 2006, it embarked a global patent suit against leading LED manufacturer Nichia, after three years the two companies finally signed a cross licensing patent agreement.
[Editor's note: This article used two news sources, the original Chinese source erroneously wrote LEDVANCE was one of the named companies. Mention of LEDVANCE as one of the warned companies has been removed as of Dec. 28, 2016.]
