– EXPECTS TO BRING AN ANNUAL ROYALTY OF $100-200 MILLION
– EPOCH-MAKING IMPROVEMENT IN MEMORY INTEGRATION AND CHIP PROCESS EFFICIENCY
HEI (President : Kim Young-Hwan) has won an infringement suit over a patent on semiconductor chip processing technology in a U.S. court for the first time in Korean history.
HEI is currently under process of having a lawsuit over a patent infringement on semiconductor chip against the world-renowned semiconductor maker ‘N’ in the Eastern District Court of Virginia in U.S. Out of the 7 cases that were lodged with the court by HEI over its own patent rights, this was the first one to be tried in the court and won by HEI. HEI expects to raise an annual royalty of $100-200 million on its technology and to save costs.
HEI’s winning of this case is especially meaningful in that it’s the first- ever internaitonal patent right case won by Korean manufacturer for its own patent and also that it provided a turning point for improving the practice of patent licensing contracts which were made disadvantageously to the domestic makers by foreign advanced chip makers.
The patent right that won the case this time is one of the crucial technologies needed in chip manufacturing process, and is used in producing 16M/64M/128M DRAMs. HEI has obtained an exclusive right for the patent in U.S till the year 2010 by applying and registering the patent, researched and developed on its own.
The patented technology makes marked improvement in chip integration and manufacturing process by connecting circuits in memory chips efficiently, and so is expected to be used by most of semiconductor makers in U.S. that sell DRAMs. HEI expects to raise royalty from these companies. Usually the royalty for one crucial patent right is more than 1% of the total sales volume.
The suit was launched by HEI as a counter-suit against ‘N’ which initially lodged complaint with the court in December of last year. Cases of both ‘N’ and HEI are currently pending.
