Late last month, Nitride Semiconductors Co., Ltd. sued Digi-Key Electronics (0:21-cv-00437), again, and Lite-On (6:21-cv-00183), for the first time, over a single patent that Nitride describes as generally related to "ultraviolet ('UV') light-emitting diode ('LED') technology". In the Lite-On complaint, the plaintiff directly targets Lite-On's provision of "[aluminum gallium nitride] AlGAN-based UV LEDs or products containing such LEDs", while the second Digi-Key complaint adds to the list of accused products allegedly sold by that defendant but made by others, now including American Opto Plus LED, Crystal IS, Kingbright Electronic, and QT Brightek (all named in the February 2021 complaint), as well as Innolux, Lite-On, Luminus Devices, RayVio, and Vishay Intertechnology (all named in an amended complaint filed in the original Digi-Key suit).
The single patent asserted throughout (6,861,270), generally related to manufacturing a semiconductor with gallium nitride wherein a second layer of that material, among other things, is a "light emitting layer", issued to Nitride Semiconductors in March 2005. It has an estimated priority date in June 2000. The plaintiff pleads that it was founded in 2000 "out of the Nitride Semiconductor Laboratory at Tokushima University in Japan", that it developed "the world's first UV LED in 2000", and that it continues to make and sell "epitaxial wafers, UV LED chips, UV LED lamps, and UV LED appliances". Currently available USPTO records identify roughly ten US patents held by Nitride.
Nitride's first case against Digi-Key, filed in September 2017 in the District of Minnesota, was stayed to await the outcome of a prior, May 2017 suit, filed in the Northern District of California directly against RayVio. A default judgment ended that first case after RayVio's 2019 bankruptcy, prompting the stay in the first suit against Digi-Key to be lifted in 2020, after which Nitride filed its amended complaint expanding the set of accused products. Fact discovery in that case does not currently close until October 2021.
While the second Digi-Key case was filed back in Minnesota, Nitride Semiconductors turned to the Western District of Texas for its new suit directly against Lite-On. 2/18, Digi-Key, District of Minnesota; 2/26, Lite-On, Western District of Texas.
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