ANSAN, South Korea (June 13, 2019) – Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (KOSDAQ 046890) (“Seoul”), a leading global innovator of LED products and technology, announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against The Factory Depot Advantages Inc., a distributor of Philips TV displays.
In its complaint, Seoul asserts that a Philips LED TV display being sold by this distributor infringes 10 patents regarding manufacturing of LED backlighting units. Particularly, these patented technologies encompass LED TV backlight unit systems for enhancing color gamut of LCD displays, and LED lenses for providing uniform illumination in LCD displays.
Seoul made significant R&D efforts since the beginning of LED backlight technology, and has established thousands of LED chip/package patents, 150 optical lens patents, and 200 high color phosphor application patents.
This is the second litigation Seoul has filed for a patent infringement lawsuit against a Philips TV product distributor. In 2018, Seoul filed a patent litigation for infringement of 19 patents against Fry’s Electronics, a U.S. big box retailer that sold alleged infringing TV products. That litigation is currently ongoing in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
“In order to protect our LED backlight system technology, we have demanded a cessation of infringement against global TV companies, TV ODM/OEM manufacturers, and LCD display manufacturers operating in the US, Europe, and Asia,” said Sam Ryu, Seoul’s Vice President of IT Business. “To establish fair market competition culture, wrong practices – attempting unfair competition by using low-cost components that infringe hard-earned patents – should be eliminated.”
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About Seoul Semiconductor
Seoul Semiconductor develops and commercializes LEDs for automotive, general illumination, specialty lighting, and backlighting markets. As the second-largest LED manufacturer globally excluding the captive market, Seoul Semiconductor holds more than 14,000 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 and cost savings at the fixture level, providing high lumen density and 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, including all AC LED-related technologies from chip to module and circuit fabrication, 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, please visit www.seoulsemicon.com/en.
Contacts:
Seoul Semiconductor Inc.
Jeonghee Kim
Tel: +82-70-4391-8311 Email: [email protected]