TIPS^®  Taiwan Intellectual Property Special

China Updates

LPL Sued Chuanghwa Picture Tubes, LTD. for Patent Infringement in the U.S.

LPL, the famous flat panel maker in South Korea accused Taiwan’s Chuanghwa Picture Tubes, LTD. (CPT) for infringing its four Side-mount patents (US6,002,457、US5,926,237、US6,373,537、US6,020,942) and two Process Patents (US4,624,737、US5,825,449) in August, 2002. After years, California Court rejected LPL’s Side-mount lawsuits but for the other two Process Patents, concerning the post trial motion from both sides, the Court made an order of partial rejection and partial approval.

In reality, the patent litigations between LPL and CPT never stop. During the investigating period, both companies spread out the related news about the court decision for several times. Recently, foreign news claimed that the infringement cases that LPL won in 2006 was permitted to request for aggravating damages. But CPT replied that LPL released the wrong information on purpose in order to affect the court proceeding. Nevertheless, due to this news, CPT’s market price has fallen for more than 2 %.

CPT was agreed with California Court to partial reject LPL’s Process Patents and has started to prepare the evidences for the partial approval parts. After the formal decision is made, CPT might appeal to the higher court.