Seoul Semiconductor Co., the world’s No. 3 light emitting diode (LED) display maker, said on Thursday it has won a patent litigation case against Philips Lighting, currently Signify N.V.
A local court of Düsseldorf in Germany on Dec. 17 dismissed Philips’ patent invalidation action against the South Korean company’s LED technology, dubbed CRI 70.
It also ordered the Dutch company to recall and destruct all the products, using the technology, which it had sold over the past seven years.
If Philips fails to comply with the court order, it should pay a penalty of $250,000 per product it had sold.
CRI stands for color rendering index. It is an indicator of how similarly lighting reproduces the actual color of an object in sunlight.
CRI 70 means an object color under lighting matches that under sunlight by more than 70%.
This patented technology is widely used in household lighting, vehicle lamps and backlights for IT devices.
Seoul Semiconductor holds about 18,000 patents. With the latest court case victory, it has won all of some 100 global patent lawsuits it was involved in.
By Ji-Hye Min
spop@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article.
