February 23, 2023
Jury Says Current and GE Lighting Must Pay $2 Million
Utah company on IP campaign lands its largest verdict to date
Last Friday a jury in Wilmington, Delaware read a verdict stating that General Electric spinoff companies, Current and GE Lighting infringed upon the intellectual property of Cao Lighting. The jury found that Current owes $1.5 million and GE Lighting owes $500,000 for damages relating to a LED lamp technology patent. The jury trial was held in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and included expert testimony from well-known lighting expert witnesses like Dr. Robert Karlicek and Jim Benya.
Cao Group is a company based in West Jordan, UT and seems to operate a business that is primarily focused on providing goods and services for the dental profession. We reported on the original complaint in our 2020 article, "Utah Company Sues Three Lamp Makers."
The asserted patent is U.S. Patent number 6,465,961 titled “Semiconductor Light Source Using a Heat Sink with a Plurality of Panels.” The invention relates to the field of light sources and illumination devices. More particularly, the invention relates to semiconductor light sources and illumination devices useful for providing visible light in order to partially or fully illuminate a space occupied by or viewed by humans, such as residential space, commercial space, outdoor space, the interior or exterior of a vehicle.
The alleged infringement reportedly occurred while the companies were under ownership of General Electric. Current was sold to New York private equity firm American Industrial Partners in 2019 and GE Lighting was acquired by Savant Systems in 2020.
The GE brands are just two of many parties who have been swept up in Cao Lighting's IP campaign in recent years. During a five-year stretch that started in 2016, Cao Lighting launched similar patent suits against Signify, Feit Electric Company, Lights of America, Topaz Lighting, Osram Sylvania and Cree, Inc. According to Law360, this jury verdict award is Cao’s largest to date.
In a recent press release, StoneTurn, a global advisory firm, announced that it assisted clients GE Lighting and Current Lighting, and their counsel Norton Rose Fulbright and Brooks Kushman, with damage control in the trial. “By determining an alternate amount of reasonable royalty damages, the StoneTurn team was able to reduce the award to the minimum royalty, $2 million, from the initial $50 million sought by Cao Lighting’s lawsuit” the firm stated.
