LED Display Maker Ultravision Wins Patent Infringement Fight With Chinese Firm

November 22, 2017 by Dave Haynes

With the qualifier that my knowledge of international patent disputes is right up there with my depth of understanding of trends in women’s footwear, this nonetheless seems interesting – a U.S. LED display tech company winning a patent dispute with a Chinese competitor.

Dallas-based Ultravision International, which makes LED displays and LED lighting products, has won a federal lawsuit against Shenzhen Only Optoelectronic Tech Co Ltd (Shenzhen Only) based on infringement on two patents regarding Ultravision’s proprietary modular LED display panel technology.

Shenzhen Only, says an Ultravision press release,  does business under several other names, including the business entities TalkLED and Shenzhen Talk Display Technology Co., Ltd.

The final judgment in Ultravision Technologies, LLC v. Shenzhen Only Optoelectronic Tech Co Ltd, issues a permanent injunction and orders Shenzhen Only to pay both compensatory and treble damages.

The ruling is out of the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which in recent years has been the epicenter of tech patent cases, notably by companies that own patents but don’t actually make or develop anything in the business.

East Texas got known as being attractive to patent trolls and favorable to defendants. A US Supreme Court ruling this year has, however, changed circumstances. That noted, if Ultravision is not IN that eastern Texas judicial district, its offices are next door in Dallas, and the company doesn’t at all fit the troll profile.

The U.S. court ruling says: “Ultravision shall recover an award of damages for Defendant’s past infringement and any continuing or infringement post-filing until all infringement, direct and indirect (of Ultravision’s patents) is stopped, including compensatory damages, treble damages for willful infringement, interest, costs, attorney fees, and as provided by 35 U.S.C. § et seq. and 28 U.S.C. §1961.”

From the press release:

The permanent injunction bars Shenzhen Only, its officers and its affiliated entities from importing products infringing on Ultravision patents. The court also issued a permanent injunction barring customers from using any products imported from Shenzhen Only that infringe on Ultravision’s patents.

The patents involved in the lawsuit are No. 9,349,306 (modular display panel) and No. 9,069,519 (power and control system for modular multi-panel display system). As the world’s foremost innovator of LED displays and LED lighting, Ultravision holds more than 20 patents throughout the world that protect the company’s intellectual property and proprietary technology, including the Ultravision-designed and patented modular LED display panel.

“This judgment and the financial damages awarded to Ultravision serve notice that Ultravision will hold accountable anyone who violates our patents or illegally uses or profits from our proprietary technology,” said William Hall, CEO and co-founder of Ultravision International. “Ultravision will not tolerate the pirating of our intellectual property or patented Modular LED Display Panels. As this successful lawsuit against Shenzhen Only illustrates, Ultravision will aggressively pursue those who infringe on our patents. Unfortunately, customers using pirated modular LED display panels will suffer, too, because the court ruling prohibits the use of counterfeited display panels; in other words, companies using those display panels must stop doing so, regardless of the impact on their business.”

I note all this because the general sense I hear among tech companies is that fighting intellectual property disputes with Chinese companies is not an overly productive pasttime.

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