ITC raps Epistar over Lumileds patent again
A further round of the ongoing LED patent battle has gone the way of Philips Lumileds, as the US International Trade Commission has turned down an appeal from Epistar.
The Taiwanese LED maker Epistar wanted the ITC to put a stay on its original exclusion order, which prevented the import of its omnidirectional mirror adhesion (OMA), glue-bond (GB) and metal-bond (MB) chips.
After a patent ruling in favor of San Jose, California, based Lumileds in January 2007, and the initiation of the exclusion order in May, Lumileds started warning its customers that they would be in breach of this order in July.
Epistar then launched an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which granted a temporary stay whilst it waited for responses from the ITC.
Epistar s appeal to the ITC for a stay was ruled out, as the ITC deemed it did not show a likelihood of success.
The ITC also criticized Epistar for relying “on quotes that are presented out of order and without context in an attempt to convey a meaning that is in contrast with that actually expressed” by the judge in the case.
Although the ITC stay has been denied, no comment has yet been made about the status of the CAFC s temporary stay, although Epistar originally said it could be lifted any time after mid-August.
While all this legal action has been going on, Epistar has also been fighting on the technological front by developing a new range of Phoenix and Aquarius LEDs, to maintain its AlInGaP chip offering in the US.
