Seoul Semiconductor Made Global Distributor Stop Selling Everlight Product in Japan

Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (KOSDAQ 046890) (“Seoul”), a leading global innovator of LED products and technology, announced that it has concluded a patent infringement lawsuit seeking an injunction on the sales of certain LED product sold by Mouser Electronics (“Mouser”). The accused LED product was manufactured by Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. (“Everlight”).

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In February 2018, Seoul filed a patent infringement lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court, accusing the LED product manufactured by Everlight and sold by Mouser of infringing an LED patent of Seoul’s affiliate. Mouser agreed not to export the accused Everlight LED product in Japan, and Seoul therefore agreed to withdraw the lawsuit.

The patented technology involved in this litigation serves to efficiently extract light emitted from the internal LED structure by attaching a light reflection structure to the LED chip, which would increase light extraction efficiency significantly.

Seoul has established hundreds of patents arising from this patented technology, which covers an LED module, package, chip, and epitaxial structure. This patented technology has been widely applied to mid-power LED products, such as lighting, automobiles, and mobile phones, whose power consumption is less than 1 W (watt).

Seoul has already obtained a judgment of injunction against certain Everlight LED products in Germany. In December 2018, the District Court of Düsseldorf rendered judgments in favor of SSC’s infringement claims, including ordering an injunction against sales of the accused Everlight products. The Court also ordered to recall the accused Everlight products sold after July 13, 2012 from the distributor’s commercial customers.

“In order to create a fair competition market, we will continue enforcement efforts to prevent manufacturers and distributors from selling suspected-infringing products,” said Nam Ki-bum, sales and marketing executive vice president of Seoul. “We will continue our best efforts to develop essential technology that enables our customers to benefit from our technology innovation.”

[A List of court judgments & resolution made in favor Seoul against Everlight]
Country		Date		Judgment
U.K.		2018.02.14		Patent Court declared Everlight’s patent invalid and ordered Everlight to pay approximately $1 million dollars in litigation costs to Seoul.
Germany		2018.12.07		Mannheim Court ruled in favor of Seoul and ordered Everlight to bear the statutory costs of the court proceeding. This judgment became final because Everlight abandoned an appeal.
Germany		2018.12.10		Mannheim Court dismissed Everlight’s claim against a distributor of Seoul and ordered Everlight to bear the statutory costs of the court proceeding. This judgment became final because Everlight abandoned an appeal.
Germany		2018.12.11		Düsseldorf Court issued a permanent injunction against sales of the accused Everlight products and ordered to recall the accused Everlight products sold after July 13, 2012 from its distributor’s commercial customers as a first instance decision.
Korea		2018.12.13		Patent Court declared the challenged claims of Everlight’s patent invalid. This judgment became final because Everlight abandoned an appeal.
Japan		2019. 1. 17.		A Distributor of Everlight products agreed not to sell the accused Everlight product in Japan.

About Seoul Semiconductor

Seoul Semiconductor develops and commercializes LEDs for automotive, general illumination, specialty lighting, and backlighting markets. As the second-largest LED manufacturer globally excluding the captive market, Seoul Semiconductor holds more than 13,000 patents, offers a wide range of technologies, and mass-produces innovative LED products such as SunLike – delivering the world’s best light quality in a next-generation LED enabling human-centric lighting optimized for circadian rhythms; WICOP – a simpler structured package-free LED which provides market leading color uniformity and cost savings at the fixture level, providing high lumen density and design flexibility; NanoDriver Series – the world’s smallest 24W DC LED drivers; Acrich, the world's first high-voltage AC-driven LED technology developed in 2005, including all AC LED-related technologies from chip to module and circuit fabrication, and nPola, a new LED product based on GaN-substrate technology that achieves more than ten times the output of conventional LEDs. UCD constitutes a high color gamut display which delivers more than 90% NTSC. For more information, please visit www.seoulsemicon.com/en.

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Contact information

Seoul Semiconductor Inc.
Jeonghee Kim
Tel: +82-70-4391-8311
Email: jeonghee.kim@seoulsemicon.com