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Sidley Austin LLP announces client settlement of patent infringement claims against LED manufacturer
Sidley Austin LLP announced today that the firm represented Professor Gertrude Neumark Rothschild in her settlement of claims of patent infringement against Toyoda Gosei Co. Ltd., and Toyoda Gosei North America Corporation.
On July 27, 2005, Professor Neumark filed suit in the Southern District of New York alleging that Toyoda Gosei had infringed U.S. Patent No. 4,904,618, "Process for Doping Crystals of Wide Band Gap Semiconductors," and U.S. Patent No. 5,252,499, "Wide Band-Gap Semiconductors Having Low Bipolar Resistivity and Method of Formation" through the unauthorized manufacture, importation, use, sale and/or offer for sale of light emitting diodes ("LEDs") and laser diode created using the processes described and claimed in each of these patents. Pursuant to the settlement agreement, Professor Neumark has granted rights under both of the Neumark patents to Toyoda Gosei.
LEDs are semiconductor diodes which convert electricity into light. Semiconductors are materials with resistivities in the range between metals and insulators, in which the electrical charge carrier concentration increases with increasing temperature over a given temperature range. Despite the recognized potential of LEDs, their commercial use was initially limited because it was not commercially feasible to produce LEDs in green and other high spectral ranges. Through the process claimed in Professor Neumark`s patents, it has become commercially feasible to produce such LEDs, and they have increasingly gained general acceptance as a superior lighting source for a large number of products.
Professor Neumark is Howe Professor Emerita of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Emerita of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and a Special Research Scientist, Columbia University, New York, New York, from where she also received her Ph.D in chemistry in 1949. She was the first woman to hold a named Chair in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University.
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