USITC to investigate Walmart, Ikea, Amazon over LED patents
The US International Trade Commission ( USITC) is to investigate several retailers of LED light bulbs following a complaint from the University of California ( UC).
In a notice on Wednesday, August 28, the USITC said it will assess whether Amazon, Ikea, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Target’s sale of certain light bulbs infringes four of the university’s patents.
The patents in dispute are US numbers 7,781,789; 9,240,529; 9,859,464 and 10,217,916.
The UC asked the USITC to open an investigation on July 30, as previously reported by WIPR. On that same day, it also filed several patent infringement complaints against the retailers at the US District Court for the Central District of California.
Law firm Nixon Peabody, which is representing the university, said that the litigation campaign was a “first-of-its-kind direct patent enforcement campaign against an entire industry”.
Seth Levy, a partner at Nixon Peabody, said the firm was pleased the USITC will be investigating the “unauthorised exploitation of the UC’s IP”.
“We hope the patent enforcement campaign as a whole continues to demonstrate the importance of respecting the rights of university patent holders,” he said.
According to the complaints, the LED lighting technology covered by the patents is “fundamental to a new generation of light bulbs”.
But according to the UC, the light bulb industry has stolen the technology with “utter disregard” for its IP.
It criticised the retailers for sourcing products from “unlicensed foreign manufacturers”, adding that “substantially all” of the allegedly infringing lightbulbs on the US market had originated from China.
The university predicted that sales of the bulbs could exceed $1 billion in the US this year.
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