On February 20, 2018, Seoul Semiconductor 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.
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.
