News: Microelectronics
9 April 2024
Innoscience refutes Infineon’s US lawsuit alleging patent infringement
Gallium nitride-on-silicon (GaN-on-Si) power solutions firm Innoscience says that it firmly denounces the accusations made on 13 March by Infineon Technologies in a patent infringement lawsuit against three Innoscience entities.
Through its subsidiary Infineon Technologies Austria AG, Infineon Technologies AG of Munich, Germany filed the lawsuit in the district court of the Northern District of California against Innoscience (Zhuhai) Technology Co Ltd of Suzhou, China, and Innoscience America Inc and affiliates. Infineon is seeking permanent injunction for infringement of a United States patent relating to GaN technology owned by Infineon. The patent claims cover core aspects of GaN power semiconductors encompassing innovations that enable the reliability and performance of Infineon’s proprietary GaN devices.
Infineon alleged that Innoscience infringes the patent by making, using, selling, offering to sell and/or importing into the USA various products, including GaN transistors for numerous applications, within automotive, data centers, solar, motor drives, consumer electronics, and related products used in automotive, industrial and commercial applications.
Innoscience denies Infineon’s allegations of patent infringement as well as the validity of the Infineon patent, adding that it will vigorously defend itself.
“Infineon’s intention with this litigation is also in question, as it has asserted a patent that has significant defects,” says Innoscience. “Even a cursory review of Infineon’s patent portfolio reveals that the alleged ‘invention’ of the asserted patent was already disclosed in Infineon’s own earlier prior art patents, raising concerns that it may have committed fraud on the United States Patent and Trademark Office for not making proper disclosures during the prosecution of the asserted defective patent,” it adds.
“In addition, contrary to Infineon’s wrong characterization that the claims of the asserted defective patent ‘cover core aspects of GaN power semiconductors’, the lawsuit only concerns a small fraction of Innoscience’s packaged high-voltage (650–700V) GaN transistors and does not affect the vast majority of its other products (including unpackaged transistors and wafers, low-voltage transistors, and certain packaged transistors). Therefore, the lawsuit should have little to no effect on Innoscience’s current ability to make, use, sell, offer to sell, or import into the United States its products for customers,” Innoscience reckons.
US Patent Office reviewing validity of two EPC patents asserted against Innoscience
