Taiwan based LED packager Everlight and LED chip manufacturer Epileds announced that they won a patent litigation in Germany.


On March 14, 2018, the patent litigation strategy alliance of Everlight and Epiled filed a nullity action claiming that the Europe patent EP1697983 (German patent DE60341314.5) should be invalid. The patent EP1697983 is owned by UCSB and JST but Seoul Semiconductor was lisenced to use it. The patent-in-suit is related to the surface roughness technology of vertical chip.

On July 2, 2020, the Court has rendered the judgment, and has decided that all claims of the patent EP1697983 (German patent DE60341314.5) are invalid.

Everlight and Seoul Semiconductor have continued their patent lawsuits across the world. During 2017 and 2018, Seoul Semiconductor filed several patent infringement claims against Everlight in Germany, UK, Italy, Japan and South Korea. 

In 2018, The two companies have settled at the case in Japan in 2019. Meanwhile, Seoul Semiconductor won the lawsuits in the Mannheim Court and in Dusseldorf in Germany. And Everlight announced victory in South Korea.