14 DAY TRIAL // It was only a matter of time before yet another battle on the legal front of the IT industry occurred. Nowadays, quite a number of companies are locked in legal action against one another, regardless of their status and popularity. Whatever such players start arguing over, the litigations can last for years. Still, those years eventually end and, inevitably, a conclusion is reached. This is exactly what happened in the case of the patent-infringement lawsuit between AU Optronics and LG Display.
It seems that, even despite its being the better known display maker of the two, LG Display has lost the case in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. This case has been going on since 2006, when LG South Korea filed a patent-infringement action against Taiwan's AUO and Chi Mei Optoelectronics.
AUO filed a counter-claim and the trial went to court in June, 2009. In the end, the ruling was that not AU but LG was infringing four of the other's patents, which deal with design elements and technologies capable of making LCDs more responsive and thinner.
The exact patents that were found to have been infringed were No. 6,778,160 (which defines technologies that improve response time), No. 6,689,629 (for improving reliability), No. 7,125,157 (solves the problem of image defects) and No. 7,090,506 (enables compact form factors, especially useful for handheld electronics). Basically, a large number of LCD TVs, monitors, public information displays, cell phones and notebooks were found to be using panels constructed with these patent-infringing technologies.
AU will attempt to get a ruling that will enforce an import ban on all the aforementioned products. This means that LG Display may no longer be allowed to sell devices based on those technologies in the United States. The press release issued by the plaintiff did not mention any sort of request for monetary rewards.