US court gives Epistar stay of execution
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has temporarily suspended a ruling preventing imports of certain Epistar LEDs to the US.
“We are encouraged by the temporary stay,” said B.J. Lee, president of the Taiwan-based LED-maker.
“We understand the CAFC rarely grants such a stay and are cautiously optimistic that the court will also grant a permanent stay whilst Epistar's appeal is litigated.”
The stay of enforcement came in response to Epistar s appeal against the US International Trade Commission s Limited Exclusion Order, which prevented import of its omni-directional mirror adhesion, glue-bond and metal-bond LEDs.
The CAFC also granted Epistar s request for an expedited response from the ITC, which will take 30 days at the longest, after which the stay could be lifted.
“Conservatively speaking, the ITC might respond anytime after mid-August, and the exclusion order will resume then,” a spokesperson for Epistar told compoundsemiconductor.net.
The company also said that until the ITC responds to the CAFC, the exclusion order is ineffective and the import of chips and lamps can continue unimpeded.
Epistar s long-term business prospects in the US continue to look healthy, after introducing its Phoenix and Aquarius ranges, which the company says “are clearly outside the scope of the Limited Exclusion Order”.
The ITC s order is based on its ruling that Epistar has infringed a Philips Lumileds patent, in a battle whose roots can be traced back to the end of the last millennium.
Lumileds has recently begun warning LED buyers of the implications of the ruling, but Epistar is still fighting its corner:
“Epistar has always maintained that the ITC decision was incorrect,” said B.J. Lee, “both factually and legally.”
