As part of the settlement, all legal actions (in court, at the patent office and others) between Veeco, China Microelectronics and SGL and their affiliates worldwide will be withdrawn or otherwise withdrawn. All business processes, including sales, services and imports, will continue, but details of the settlement terms have not been announced.
To this end, Dr. Yin Zhiyao, chairman and chief executive officer of China Micro-Micro, said that reconciliation is a good example of how rivals should solve intellectual property issues based on the interests of global customers.
"We are pleased to report that we have reached a mutually agreed settlement of existing intellectual property disputes that will return our MOCVD operations to normal operations," said Veeco Chairman and CEO John Pillers.
On April 12, 2017, Veeco filed a patent infringement lawsuit against SGL in a federal court in the Eastern District of New York, the United States, and SGL was a supplier of wafer carrier to Semiconductor Corp. In early November of the same year, the District Court for the Eastern District of New York agreed that Veeco A preliminary injunction from SGL, which prohibits SGL from selling wafer carriers for use with MOCVD using Veeco's patented technology, includes wafers specifically designed for medium and micro MOCVD systems Carrier.
In response to SGL's lawsuit filed by Veeco United States, Microchip responded quickly and in July 2017, Semiconductor formally filed a lawsuit against Veeco Shanghai against Fujian High Court, alleging that its TurboDisk EPIK 700 MOCVD equipment infringed China micro-wafer carrier synchronization lock the Chinese patent, requiring it to stop infringement and claim hundreds of millions of yuan damages infringement.In early December, Fujian High Court agreed to the micro-semiconductor in Veeco Shanghai ban on the application, the ban banned Veeco Shanghai imports, Manufacture, sell or promise to sell to any third party the patent infringement of graphite plate products.
In the process, after Veeco filed a lawsuit in July last year, Veeco Shanghai filed a patent invalidation request with the Patent Reexamination Board, claiming that the semiconductor was not valid, and the Patent Reexamination Board dismissed Veeco's proposal on November 24, 2017 Invalid declaration request to confirm the effective micro-semiconductor patent.
In the first month of 2018, two good news were announced successively by Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. On January 12, 2018, according to Chinese law, China Customs adopted IP protection measures based on CN202492576, Seized two EPOC700 MOCVD equipment that Veeco Asia imported into China and allegedly infringed the patent.
On January 23, 2018, the Patent Reexamination Board of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) made a decision on the examination and found that Veeco USA No. ZL 01822507.1, entitled "Baseless reactor for growing epitaxial layers on a wafer by chemical vapor deposition" Of the invention patent is invalid because of its lack of novelty and inventive step.It is reported that this invalidated patent is the same Chinese patent family of the U.S. Patent (US 6,506,252, US 6,726,769) that Veeco USA sued SGL for patent infringement last year.