Automotive lighting maker Depo Auto Parts Industry Co (帝寶工業) assured its institutional investors yesterday that the firm’s designs would “avoid the infringement of patents.”
It issued the assurance at a conference held by Hua Nan Securities Co (華南永昌證券) in Taipei.
Depo has since last year been in a legal dispute with German automaker Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz AG, which claims that Depo’s after-market vehicle lights infringe upon one of its design patents.
In a first ruling in August last year, the Intellectual Property Court decided in favor of Daimler.
Quoting investors who attended the conference, CNA reported that Depo said that it expects a second decision in the case in the first quarter of next year.
The investors referred to the passage of a “repair clause” in German law, which might help decide the case in Depo’s favor.
Meyer-Dulheuer MD Legal Patentanwalte, a German law firm, said on its Web site that the clause, passed last month, excludes spare parts from design protection.
Depo in July pledged to invest NT$2.1 billion (US$73.58 million) to expand the capacity of its Changhua Coastal Industrial Park (彰濱工業區) facilities. It is also building a new molding research and development plant in Tainan’s Sinying Industrial Park (新營工業區) to expand its high-end product range and improve production automation.
Depo’s Taiwan capacity could reach 40 million pieces a year, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s Web site.
Depo said that it has steadily received orders and has adequate capacity, but it is facing a bottleneck in shipping to US and European customers due to a lack of cargo container space, the CNA report said.
The company plans to increase the percentage of original equipment products in its lineup, mostly manufactured in China, the report said, adding that about 20 percent of Depo equipment is original while 80 percent is for after-market sales.
Depo posted a net profit of NT$370.38 million in the first three quarters, down 37 percent from NT$586.07 million in the same period last year, a exchange filing showed.
Revenue for the first three quarters of this year dropped 9.6 percent year-on-year to NT$10.37 billion, from NT$11.55 billion, the filing showed.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to