Seoul Semiconductor and Everlight Electronics Settle ITC Action in Landmark LED and LD Patent Case Brought by Columbia Professor Emerita Gertrude Neumark Rothschild

NEW YORK, April 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd, a South Korea-based maker of LEDs, and Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., a Taiwan-based company, have signed Settlement Agreements in a patent case brought before the U.S. International Trade Commission by Columbia University Professor Emerita Gertrude Neumark Rothschild. Dreier LLP is representing Professor Rothschild in her ITC case. Professor Rothschild recently settled her lawsuit with Philips Electronics and gave them a non-exclusive license.

Dreier LLP Intellectual Property attorneys Albert Jacobs and Daniel Ladow are representing Professor Rothschild in her complaint to the ITC, which seeks to block the imports of the infringing products, including video players using Sony's Blu-ray format, Motorola Razr phones and Hitachi camcorders.

"The licensing agreements with Seoul Semiconductor and Everlight are an important step forward in this case since more companies are recognizing Professor Rothschild's seminal breakthroughs in the production of the blue, green, violet and ultraviolet LEDs and LDs that are essential to a host of consumer products," Mr. Jacobs stated. The U.S. International Trade Commission is hearing the case filed by Professor Rothschild, which seeks to block the importation of a wide array of consumer electronics products manufactured by 31 companies that infringe her patent for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs).

The action alleges that major electronics manufacturers in Asia and Europe have violated her patent for producing LEDs and LDs in a wide variety of consumer products. The companies named in the suit include Hitachi Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sanyo Electric Co., Sharp Co., Sony Corp., Sony Ericsson Mobile and Toshiba Corp.

Professor Rothschild, who is the sole owner of the patent, conducted groundbreaking research in the 1980s and 1990s into the electrical and optical properties of so-called wide band-gap semiconductors that has proven pivotal in the development of short-wavelength emitting (blue, green, violet and ultraviolet) semiconductor diodes that are now widely used in consumer electronics.

She was issued a U.S. patent in 1993 that covers a method of producing wide band-gap semiconductors for LEDs in the blue, green, violet and ultraviolet end of the spectrum. Such LEDs and LDs have become increasingly popular in a variety of devices as a superior lighting source because of their reduced power consumption, greater reliability, longevity and, in the case of LDs, their ability to hold a vast amount of data in a compact space.

The total market for these types of semiconductors has been forecast at $7.2 billion for 2009.

Earlier this year, Philips named a Philips Electronics Chair in the Department of Applied Physics at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University in her honor. Recognized by the American Physical Society as a Notable Woman Physicist in 1998, Professor Rothschild was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1982.

Background on Dreier LLP

Dreier LLP was founded in 1996 by Marc Dreier as a more responsive and innovative alternative to traditional "large-firm" lawyering. Dreier LLP represents a wide range of institutional, entrepreneurial and individual clients in diverse sectors of financial, industrial and service-oriented markets. The firm's principal practices are commercial litigation, real estate, bankruptcy and corporate reorganization, employment, corporate and securities, entertainment, intellectual property, matrimonial and tax. Dreier LLP's Los Angeles affiliate, Dreier Stein Kahan Browne Woods George LLP, has its principal practice in entertainment and commercial litigation and corporate transactions. The firm's New York affiliate Schlesinger Gannon & Lazetera LLP has an extensive practice in the area of trusts and estates law. Pitta & Dreier LLP is an affiliate which specializes in labor law, and Pitta, Bishop, Del Giorno & Dreier LLP specializes in government relations. In the 12 years since its founding, Dreier LLP, with its affiliate members, has grown to more than 200 attorneys, with its principal office at 499 Park Avenue in Manhattan, and additional offices in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California; Albany, New York; Stamford, Connecticut; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.