Kicking against the Pricks: Harvatek’s Bold Attempt in LED Wars with Cree

View: 1684     Date: 2016-05-17 09:49

Takeaway: Can an egg strike a rock? In most cases, people would say no. Yet the answer is yes for Harvatek Corp., which is definitely nobody in the face of Cree Inc., the giant in the global LED industry, which lodged six patent infringement lawsuits against Harvatek in 2014. A bold attempt is half success, as the saying goes. Harvatek took up the challenge from several aspects, which fought back actively in the U.S. court and simultaneously sagely selected China as the other battlefield in its favor with commissioning a quite experienced patent invalidation dispute law firm—Leader Patent & Trademark firm, to invalidate one of Cree’s patents in China. In the end, it turned out that Harvatek’s bold attempt was paid off. 

Recently, the patent infringement lawsuits between Cree Inc. and Feit Electric Company, Inc. made highlines in the LED industry. In fact, as a global LED giant with a myriad of patents around the world, Cree has always been the major role in the LED-related patent wars. A large number of LED manufactures were on its attack list. Harvatek Corp., a LED manufacturer in Taiwan with Cree as its supporter, just got stuck in the infringement disputes with Cree over the past few years.

On September 15, 2014, Cree accused Harvate of infringing its six white LED patents in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. Later in December, Harvate filed counterclaims in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Cree and its branches in H.K. and Shanghai in China.

Simultaneously in December of 2014, Harvate also tried to transferred the battle into China by commissioning the highly experienced Leader Patent & Trademark firm to invalidate one of Cree’s patents named ”Apparatus and method for use in mounting electronic elements”, which was finally announced by the Patent Reexamination Board(PRB) of the State Intellectual Property Office in China to be invalidated on July 26, 2015.

In April of 2015, a settlement was reached between Cree and Harvate to withdraw all their ongoing lawsuits, under which Harvate would pay Cree a secret number of royalties and annual fees for licensing.

On January 26th, 2016, Harvate transformed its passive role by suing Cree on a white patent (US 6,841,934) in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Harvate stated that the involved technology absorbed their many R.D. resources and consisted of substantial Patent Portfolios, with which defending the rights and interests of Harvate’s clients and shareholders is unquestionable. To date, this case is still pending.

So, what will happen if an egg strikes a rock? Who knows? Maybe, that egg is not only an egg.

(International Affairs Dept. of Leader IP)