AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the nation’s No. 2 LCD panel maker, said yesterday it had won a patent lawsuit against LG Display Co Ltd (LGD) in the US and would seek an injunction to stop its South Korean rival from selling products found to have infringed its patented technologies in the US.
AUO will claim unspecified damages from LGD and charge royalties if LGD and its customers export products using AUO patents, company spokeswoman Hsiao Ya-wen (蕭雅文) said by telephone yesterday.
“This is a major legal victory in the history of patent lawsuits between local companies and their global rivals,” Hsiao said.
The US District Court for the District of Delaware on Feb. 16 ruled that LGD infringed four AUO patents at the center of a countersuit AUO brought against the South Korean firm in 2006, the company said in the statement.
On April 30, the US court ruled that AUO did not infringe any of the four patents asserted by LGD in the original lawsuit, after an extensive bench trial.
The court also concluded that LGD committed intellectual property rights infringement. Based on this ruling, AUO hopes that LGD’s customers will stop purchasing unauthorized products from LGD for sale or use in the US.
The four AUO patents the court found LGD had infringed include US Patent No. 6,778,160; No. 6,689,629; No. 7,125,157 and No. 7,090,506, patented technologies designed respectively to improve response time, improve reliability of LCDs, solve the problem of defects in the displayed images and provide a compact structure useful for small hand-held devices, the company said.
The infringing LGD products range from LCD panels for TVs, monitors, notebooks and public information displays to mobile phone panels, it added.
A substantial share of products using LGD’s LCD panels sold in the US for the damages period through the date of trial are infringing products, it said.
In 2006, LGD filed a lawsuit against AUO and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), alleging that the Taiwanese firms were illegally using its LCD manufacturing technologies.
The case went to trial in June last year. At the trial, LGD claimed more than US$690 million of damages from AUO, but the Taiwanese firm was cleared of patent infringement last week.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last