Sony Corp, Japan’s biggest exporter of consumer electronics, filed patent-infringement claims seeking to block LG Electronics Inc from shipping mobile phones to the US.
Sony filed the complaints on Tuesday with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington and in a federal court in Los Angeles. The ITC, which is considering at least a dozen cases related to the expanding market for smartphones, has the power to block imports of products found to violate US patents. The federal court can impose financial penalties.
LG phones, including the Lotus Elite, Neon, Remarq, Rumor 2 and Xenon, are using Sony technology without permission, Tokyo-based Sony said in the civil lawsuit. LG, the world’s third-largest maker of mobile phones, is also being targeted in Sony’s patent suit for its Blu-ray disc players. A copy of the ITC complaint was not immediately available.
“Sony has been keen to protect its patents,” said Yuji Fujimori, a Tokyo-based analyst at Barclays Capital. “The US is an important market for Sony, as its mobile phone venture with Ericsson is trying to win a bigger share.”
The eight Sony patents in the federal court case include ones related to a way to display telephone number listings, direction keys on a portable phone and signal transmission.
John Taylor, a spokesman in the US for Seoul-based LG, said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
Sony plans to invest ¥100 billion (US$1.2 billion) over the next fiscal year to double production capacity for image sensors used in smartphones. A company spokesman this week said an Asahi Shimbun report that Sony may start selling a PSP handheld game machine equipped with a phone was “speculation.”
LG, which plans to begin sales in January of its first smartphone built with a dual-core processor, said on Monday it is trying to boost revenue at its consumer electronics, displays and handsets units by 13 percent next year.
The company lags behind Nokia Oyj and Samsung Electronics Co in sales of mobile phones, according to researcher Gartner Inc. Global sales of all models of mobile phones to end users rose 35 percent in the third quarter to 417 million units, Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner said last month. There were 80.5 million smartphones sold.
LG Electronics said yesterday it would “actively respond” to the lawsuit.
“Based on results of our review, we will take action and actively respond” to Sony’s move, spokeswoman Na Joo-young said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained