I wonder if AKT is a part of this?
Headline: FOCUS-U.S. chip designer sues Asian chipmakers
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(recasts lead paragraph, paragraph 2-3, adds plaintiff
lawyer and defendant comment in paragraph 7-10, 17-22)
By Eric Auchard
NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - A computer chip inventor
revealed on Thursday that his licensing companies had sued a
dozen top Asian semiconductor makers alleging infringement on
U.S. patents covering core chip-making and flat-panel computer
display technologies.
According to court documents, Plasma Physics Corp. and
Solar Physics Corp., headquartered in Locust Valley, N.Y.,
filed the patent infringement suit on Dec. 28, 1999 in federal
court for the Eastern District of New York in Uniondale, N.Y.
The patents cover the work of pioneering inventor John
Coleman, president of both Plasma Physics and Solar Physics.
Both research companies license Coleman's inventions to
manufacturers, the court papers said.
Because the case covers processes used throughout the
semiconductor industry, a $144 billion worldwide business, the
case could become one of the largest patent lawsuits in U.S.
history, said Fish & Neave, the plaintiffs' law firm.
Defendants include Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. (TOKYO:6702), Hitachi
Ltd. (TOKYO:6501), Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.
(TOKYO:6752), Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (TOKYO:6503), Advanced Display
Inc., NEC Corp. (TOKYO:6701), Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd.
(TOKYO:6703), Sharp Corp. (TOKYO:6753), Sony Corp. (TOKYO:6758), Toshiba
Corp. (TOKYO:6502).
Also included were South Korea's Hyundai Group's [HYGR.CN]
Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd., LG Electronics Inc.
(KOREA:64010) and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (KOREA:05930) and
certain of the Japanese and Korean companies' U.S. units. Named
additionally was Display Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:DTEK) of Orlando,
Fla.
Fish & Neave law partner Patricia Martone told Reuters the
defendants targeted in the suit reflected those companies with
which Coleman had been trying -- unsuccessfully, to date -- to
negotiate licenses.
"We started with these companies because Mr. Coleman has
had extensive business dealings in Japan for some time," she
said. She declined to discuss whether other makers of
semiconductor devices would be added to the suit.
Plasma CVD, or chemical vapor deposition, is a common
technique in the seminconductor manufacturing process used to
create the various layers of circuits that form a chip.
A spokesman for Hitachi America Ltd. and a spokeswoman for
a U.S.-based Samsung unit said they were aware of the suit but
declined to comment. A U.S.-based NEC spokeswomen said she was
not aware of the lawsuit and declined to comment. Spokesmen for
LG Electronics, Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba were not
immediately available to comment on the suit.
The lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Arthur Spatt in the
Uniondale courthouse, the plaintiffs' attorneys said.
The Fish & Neave lawyers involved -- Herbert Schwartz,
Edward Mullowney and Patricia Martone -- had won $925 million
in the largest patent infringement award ever paid in a 1989
case brought by Polaroid Corp. (NYSE:PRD) against Eastman Kodak
Co. (NYSE:EK) over patents covering instant camera technology.
New York-based Fish & Neave also acted as lead law firm in
another high-profile semiconductor case in 1997 in which
Digital Equipment Corp. sued Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) for alleged
patent infringement involving Digital's Alpha computer chips.
Two of the three patents in the lawsuit cover processes for
semiconductor production using plasma chemical vapor deposition
(CVD), a widely-used step in computer chip-making.
The third patent covers the structure of flat panel
displays known as thin film transistor liquid crystal displays
(LCD's), used to make flat screens for computers and
televisions. Flat screen displays are among the most popular
computer items on the market and are expected eventually to
supplant current cathode ray tube computer and television
monitors.
The suit seeks to permanently enjoin the defendants from
making products infringing on the three patents and for
monetary damages to be awarded to the plaintiffs, including
interest, treble damages and attorneys' fees.
Left out of the suit were a variety of Asian, U.S. and
European flat panel display manufacturers including
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), Philips
Electronics NV (AMS:PHG) and Taiwan's Acer Group (TW:2306).
Martone noted that Coleman has at least one licensee for
each of the three patents but declined to identity any of the
licensees, saying the companies' names were confidential.
The plaintiff's lawyer said the potential damages sought in
the lawsuit had not been calculated. The figure would be based
on the sales of related products by the plaintiffs in the
United States over time.
She estimated that of the $144 billion worth of
semiconductors produced worldwide last year, about a third were
sold in the United States and the defendants represented about
20 percent of sales there.
"We're saying it has the potential to be very large and
that's really all I can say," Martone said.
Coleman started working in plasma research at RCA
Laboratories in the late 1940s. He went independent in 1950,
forming Radiation Research Corp., where he began work on basic
plasma chemical vapor deposition technology developments,
Martone said. |
