Warning on Patent Infringement
Seoul Semiconductor Co.(http://www.seoulsemicon.com/en/html/main/), the nation's leading light emitting diode (LED) maker, sent its engineers and intellectual property law team and lawyers to 29 global leading lighting and TV manufacturers based in the U.S., China, Europe and Taiwan for three months from September, and insisted that they respect Seoul Semiconductor’s intellectual property rights for its patents they infringed on backlight, filament, LED chip and package.
The 29 companies included seven American companies, including Feit, three European companies including Redvan, 15 Chinese companies including Skyworth and four Taiwanese companies including AOT.
Their LED TVs, smartphone flash and LED filament light bulbs violated Seoul Semiconductor’s patents for essential technologies used in TVs, smartphones and lighting, such as the Wafer Level Integrated Chip on PCB (Wicop), the world’s first technology to free from packaging process for conventional LED package manufacturing, the Acrich Multi-Junction Technology (MJT), which works on high voltage power for domestic use, and the Filament, a new design technology for lamps.
In 2006, Seoul Semiconductor filed a patent infringement lawsuit against AOT and won the lawsuit filed in the Taiwanese and the Korean Supreme Court. However, AOT shut down its authorized dealer in Korea and is still selling the products infringed on Seoul Semiconductor’s patents after circumventing and changing the product part numbers as well as similar products.
Meanwhile, Seoul Semiconductor issued a cease and desist order to Japanese LED lens maker Enplas. The company has been involved in global litigation with Enplas on backlight lenses patents since 2013. It already invalidated major patents of Enplas and the U.S. district court upheld a finding that Enplas willfully infringed Seoul Semiconductor’s patented technology and is liable for US$4 million (4.74 billion won).