Silergy's LED linear dimming patent was declared invalid, and its listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board suffered another blow

On July 23, the second day of the opening of the Science and Technology Innovation Board, the news that dominated the screen was that the Science and Technology Innovation Board Listing Committee cancelled the review of Jingfeng Mingyuan's issuance and listing application due to litigation.

As for the content involved in the lawsuit, the source of basically all reports points to a report published by the Communications Industry Network on July 22.

It was made clear that the reason why Silergy sued Jingfeng Mingyuan was that the latter's "linear dimming" product infringed Silergy's patent rights.

This is the first case in which a company’s review on the Science and Technology Innovation Board was cancelled due to an intellectual property dispute.

From the timeline, Jingfeng Mingyuan was prosecuted on July 19, which was a Friday;

After a weekend, news of the lawsuit broke on Monday morning;

The very next day, the Science and Technology Innovation Board Listing Committee issued an announcement.

It can be seen that the response of the Science and Technology Innovation Board Listing Committee is very quick and it attaches great importance to litigation involving intellectual property rights.

But, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse...

Just the day after the Science and Technology Innovation Board Listing Committee announced the cancellation of the review of Jingfeng Mingyuan, a patent invalidation decision was also announced.

The patent owner is none other than Silergy;

The patent content is the driving circuit of linear dimming.

The patents were declared invalid in their entirety.

The patent claims are excerpted as follows, which undoubtedly involve linear dimming related technologies.

So is this invalidated linear dimming patent the linear dimming patent that Silergy sued Jingfeng Mingyuan for? Or one of them?

There is no solid evidence yet, and neither the parties involved in the lawsuit nor the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court has disclosed it.

All I can say is, suspected.

But you have to know that no patent will be invalidated without reason. Otherwise, on what basis and what motivation would others have to request that your patent be invalidated?

Moreover, there are so many patents of Silergy that are not invalidated, so why is this one invalid?

It must be the patent that's getting in the way, right?

However, even if this patent is indeed a patent involved in litigation, it should be just one of the patents involved in litigation.

If you take a patent that is in the invalidation process and sue for infringement,

It doesn't look like a big company like Silergy at all...

If you just sued someone for infringement and the patent was invalidated,

It doesn't look like a big company like Silergy at all...

It is not uncommon to see patents invalidated just after suing someone; although administrative litigation can be initiated against invalidation decisions...

You should know that among Silergy's patents, there are at least 10 patents that explicitly mention linear dimming, some of which were purchased from NXP.

On the other hand, judging from the information on the request for invalidation of the patent, the applicant is a "straw man" whose origin is unclear and who the real applicant is.

The request for invalidation of the patent was made in January this year, even earlier than the April when Jingfeng Mingyuan submitted its listing materials on the Science and Technology Innovation Board.

One speculation is that this is because Jingfeng Mingyuan conducted a pre-market freedom to operate (FTO) investigation in advance and initiated the invalidation of the patent.

If so, all I can say is, well done.

Another speculation is that the person making the request may not have any relationship with Jingfeng Mingyuan.

First, if Jingfeng Mingyuan really initiated the invalidation after the FTO investigation, it should not have requested only one invalidation.

Half a year has passed, and no patent of Silergy has been invalidated.

Second, judging from the timeline of the cancellation of the review, Jingfeng Mingyuan was clearly in a very unfavorable position.

He didn't even have a chance to fight back, and he may not even have shown the Science and Technology Innovation Board Listing Committee a copy of the Notice of Acceptance of the Request for Patent Invalidation...

If there is such a magic weapon that can stop patent litigation, the Science and Technology Innovation Board Listing Committee will not give it face...