Everlight Electronics Co (億光), the nation’s leading LED chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said the company has won a favorable ruling from Seoul’s patent regulator in a patent fight with a South Korean rival.
The Korean Intellectual Property Office on Thursday last week dismissed a patent invalidity lawsuit launched by rival Seoul Semiconductors Co over patent KR768539, according to a company statement released yesterday.
Everlight Electronics also expects favorable rulings by the District Court of Mannheim, Germany, in two patent infringement lawsuits against Neumuller Elektronic GmbH, the company said.
In its court battles in South Korea and Germany, the company has requested local courts ban its rivals from importing, exporting, manufacturing or distributing products protected by its patents, it said, adding that it is seeking punitive damages.
Meanwhile, the firm’s revenue fell 16.88 percent to NT$2.11 billion (US$72.24 million) last month, compared with NT$2.54 billion in March last year, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
In the first three months of this year, revenue contracted 6.66 percent to NT$6.27 billion from NT$6.72 billion during the same period last year, it said.
Net income last year dipped 32.1 percent annually to NT$1.25 billion — its poorest showing in the past five years — or earnings per share of NT$2.74, the company reported earlier this year.
Sales in the past year also dipped 6.9 percent annually to NT$27.31 billion, it said.
The company’s core LED lighting and display backlight businesses faced increased competition from Chinese companies, causing average selling prices to drop nearly 30 percent last year, it said.
LED prices are expected to face further downward pressure as capacity expands around the world, it said.
Everlight Electronics plans to shift its focus from the highly contested backlight and lighting segments to automotive products in search of higher margins.
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],”
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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