On March 4 last year Super Vision announced that it had acquired the patent from High End Systems, and the following day filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida alleging that Color Kinetics had infringed the High End patent and sought damages of $10.5 million. Super Vision's High End patent lawsuit was subsequently transferred from Florida to the federal court in Massachusetts.
At the time the patent was acquired, Super Vision said its interest in the Belliveau patent was due to the broad coverage of this patent in the use of networked, centrally controlled, addressable colour changing lighting systems incorporating pulse width modulation and variable digital control circuitry which can vary the intensity of individual lamp elements to generate unlimited colours. Super Vision will utilize this patent to incorporate all future development of its LED lighting systems for the lighting, sign, pool and landscape industry. "This patent represents the foundation on which all LED lighting systems are being designed and built today," commented Brett Kingstone, Super Vision's president, in March 2004. "In our research of hundreds of patents and prior art applications, the Belliveau patent stood out as the earliest and most important patent in the field. We are grateful to Richard Belliveau's pioneering efforts and to High End for providing us with this opportunity. We look forward to cooperating with many of our colleagues in the manufacturing industry to make this process available to them as well."
Also speaking in March 2004, Frank Gordon, High End Systems' CEO stated ". . . we were pleased to support [Super Vision] with the understanding that they should also share this patent through fair licensing arrangements within the industry to help support free trade and continued growth in the field."
The Belliveau patent, pre-dating all of CK's patent portfolio, is seen as a major weapon in the SV's ongoing patent dispute with CK. Despite the fact that both Super Vision and High End seemed confident in the transaction, and that a number of other companies have since licensed from Super Vision the technology covered by the patent, it now seems that the terms of the acquisition of the patent have been subject to re-interpretation. However, the court's decision does leave open the possibility of closing what appears to be a legal loophole.
(Lee Baldock)
