Touch-panel controller chip manufacturer Elan Microelectronics Corp (義隆電子) yesterday said it had sued a Taiwanese company and its Chinese distributor in a Beijing court for patent infringement.
In a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Elan Microelectronics accused Egalax Empia Technology Inc (禾瑞亞科技) and Beijing Guanglong Xinchuang Technological Development Co (北京廣龍新創科技) of infringing a patent it owns that is related to capacitive touch technologies.
Elan said it had asked the Second Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing to order the accused companies to immediately cease all activities involving the patented technology.
The controller chip maker, which supplies touch-screen driver integrated circuits (IC) for Google Inc’s Nexus 7 tablets, said it also demanded the accused companies pay damages for the financial losses incurred by the infringement.
Elan did not say how much compensation it was asking for.
The lawsuit against Egalax Empia, which is an IC design and systems integration company, is the second that Elan has filed against it this year. On March 7, Elan filed a complaint with Taiwan’s Intellectual Property Court alleging that its local rival infringed another patent related to capacitive touch.
Also last month, Elan sued Suzhou-based Pixcir Microelectronics Co (瀚瑞微電子) for infringing a similar patent.
Elan has pinned its hopes on strengthening its patent portfolio in the fight for dominance in the booming touch controller IC business.
The firm is also hoping that consumer demand for Microsoft Corp’s new Windows 8 touch notebooks will boost its sales this year after it saw record sales of NT$7.23 billion (US$241.59 million) last year.
Elan’s sales last year rose 39 percent from 2011, while net profit also jumped by 147 percent year-on-year to a record-high NT$1.17 billion, or earnings per share of NT$3, the company said in a March 19 filing.
Deutsche Bank AG said in a recent report that Elan’s touch IC business would grow to account for 34 percent of its total sales in the second quarter this year, compared with 32.5 percent in the first quarter and 29.1 percent in the last quarter of last year.
“We expect this ratio to increase further through 2013,” Deutsche Bank analyst Jessica Chang (張幸宜) said in the report on March 21. “We forecast Elan will increase its touch control IC sales weight to 38 percent in 2013 and 46 percent in 2014, up from 17 percent in 2012.”
Chang also said she expected Elan’s sales momentum to grow continuously into the second quarter on the back of Windows 8 notebooks and Android tablet models being released by its global top-tier customers.
Elan’s sales were forecast to crease by 20 percent this quarter to NT$2.19 billion from an estimated NT$1.82 billion in the previous quarter, with gross margin staying flat at 47 percent, Deutsche Bank said.
Total annual sales will expand 25 percent to NT$9.05 billion this year, with net profit surging by 60 percent to NT$1.88 billion, or NT$4.5 per share, it forecast.
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