Context: In May 2023, Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) filed a Sec. 337 complaint against China’s Innoscience Suzhou Technology Holding Co., Ltd. (Innoscience) in the United States International Trade Commission’s (USITC or ITC), enforcing four patents related to certain gallium nitride (GaN) technology. EPC then withdrew two of those patents. And, last July, the ITC’s Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Clark Cheney found one patent was infringed, while the other was not (July 7, 2024 ip fray article). In January, Innoscience appealed against the ITC’s ruling on the validity and infringement of that one patent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
What’s new: In an “ultimate victory” for Innoscience in this long-running dispute, the company yesterday announced the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) invalidated the only remaining patent in the ITC case after Innoscience proved that EPC’s allegations were “completely unfounded” (March 19, 2025 Innoscience press release).
Direct impact and wider ramifications: This will obviously be a big blow to EPC, although appeals are still on the table. Innoscience is also facing another major GaN dispute, filed by rival Infineon, in which it filed a countersuit in a court in China in January. The Chinese semiconductor firm is showing no signs of backing down. The company made that clear in its press release yesterday, stating: “Innoscience is ready to dust off the discord fabricated by EPC and focus its effort on developing and providing top-notch GaN-based power solutions for its customers worldwide.”
The last remaining patent-in-suit was:
- U.S. Patent No. 8,350,294 (“Compensated gate MISFET and method for fabricating the same”).
In its announcement yesterday, Innoscience said the USPTO found that all challenged claims of the patent are invalid and should be cancelled. The decision “removes the entire foundation” of EPC’s “false” patent infringement claim against Innoscience and means the defendant has achieved a complete victory in the two-year-long “meritless patent war” launched by EPC.
This is the final written decision after the inter partes review:
Counsel
A team at Finnegan helped secure this win for Innoscience, including Lionel Lavenue, Kara Specht, Cory Bell, Forrest Jones, Chen Zang, Yi Yu, Luke MacDonald, and Carlos Duarte-Guevara.
EPC was represented by Blank Rome‘s Walter Davis, Dipu Doshi, Mark Thronson, Stephen Soffen, Ameya Paradkar, and Jonathan England.
Other ongoing GaN litigation
Innoscience is also embroiled in a dispute over GaN patents brought by German chipmaker Infineon in both Germany and the U.S. – a case that has seen the pendulum swing back and forth quite frequently over the past nine months. Last June, the Munich I Regional Court granted Infineon an ex parte preliminary injunction (PI) (June 16, 2024 ip fray article). In that decision, Innoscience claimed, the court granted the ex parte PI without having seen a protective writ. This possibly marked the first time (at least in recent history) in which a German national court granted an ex parte patent PI on that basis.
In the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, also last June, a motion brought by Innoscience to dismiss the lawsuit was quickly denied without prejudice by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers (June 26, 2024 ip fray article). The following month, Infineon added three more patents to its U.S. lawsuit (July 24, 2024 ip fray article).
In the most recent development in that case, Innoscience countersued Infineon in the Intermediate People’s Court of Suzhou City, enforcing two GaN-related patents (January 20, 2025 Innoscience press release).