Nichia granted injunction against Everlight
The chips have the part numbers ES-CEBH712:A3 and ES-CEBH712:A4, and are said to infringe on Nichia’s Taiwan patent no. 160,722.
The part numbers correspond to chips manufactured by Epistar, a Taiwanese company which is also the subject of an injunction granted to Nichia (see Update: Nichia gains injunction against Epistar (October 2003)).
The infringement case between Nichia and Epistar alleges that certain of Epistar’s blue LED products infringe on Nichia s Taiwan patent no. 160,722, the same patent as in the Everlight case. It seems that Nichia’s case against Everlight is an extension of its attempt to prevent Epistar from selling products that allegedly use Nichia’s patented technology.
This theory is supported by a brief statement on Nichia’s website saying that the preliminary injunction order “may” prevent Everlight from using the chips in question. Nichia also says that it is currently evaluating whether to enforce the preliminary injunction order, and whether further legal actions will be instigated against other assembly manufacturers that use products infringing Nichia s patent(s).
It appears that Nichia is using its intellectual property muscle to force packaging companies such as Everlight to stop using Epistar’s products.
Everlight sells packaged blue LEDs as well as white LEDs, and recently licensed white LED technology from Osram Opto Semiconductors (see Osram grants LED patent license to Everlight (October 2003)).
Nichia says that it believes that these actions are necessary in order to protect its intellectual properties and its licensing partners’ legal rights. Nichia has (frequently) expressed a willingness to enforce its intellectual property rights against any other infringement in any country in the world.