Seoul Semiconductor sues US lighting firm for patent infringement

Seen is Seoul Semiconductor's promotional booth at the IFA tech fair in Berlin, Sept. 2. Korea Times photo by Baek Byung-yeul

By Baek Byung-yeul

Seoul Semiconductor filed a lawsuit against U.S.-based lighting company Feit Electric for infringement on 12 patents held by the Korean LED tech company, it said Tuesday.

The company said the case was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. In a complaint filed in August, the company asked the court to ban sales of lighting products of Feit, which manufactured and sold lighting products in violation of 12 patents of Seoul Semiconductor.

Seoul Semiconductor said it launched lawsuits five times in the U.S. against Feit's continued patent infringement, saying it already won two cases. In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. courts ordered companies distributing Feit's patent-infringing products to ban their sales.

Despite the order, Feit's patent infringement practices have not been corrected, Seoul Semiconductor said. “We have drawn a ban on sales in patent lawsuits against distributors of Feit products. However, Feit's infringement was not corrected after the lawsuits, so we filed a lawsuit directly against Feit this time,” a spokesperson for Seoul Semiconductor said.

The Korean LED company has a history of taking legal action against companies alleged to have violated its patents. In previous lawsuits, the company launched a series of patent infringement lawsuits against Taiwan-based Everlight Electronics, which once accounted for the fifth-largest share of the world's LED packaging market.

As a result, a German court prohibited the Taiwanese firm from selling LED products and ordered recalls of its products in 2018 and 2019. A court in Korea also fined the Taiwanese company in June for stealing trade secrets of the Korean company.

“There are many bad companies that ignore intellectual property rights while proclaiming their desire to achieve environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG),” the company official said, emphasizing that intellectual property rights should be respected to ensure fairness.