Several Chinese display manufacturers, including BOE, CSOT, Tianma and Visionox, jointly announced that they have filed a petition to invalidate a patent of Samsung Display in the US. This move is seen as a response to Samsung’s previous request to the US International Trade Commission to ban the import and sale of Chinese-made OLED panels, which Samsung claimed might infringe its patent technology. The patent in dispute is US Patent No. 7,414,599, which relates to pixel circuits and driving methods for organic light-emitting display (OLED) devices.

In 2022, BOE surpassed its old rival Samsung Display with 2,195 patents to become the panel maker with the most patents granted in the US that year. Shortly after that, Samsung Display sought to stop the import of infringing Chinese-made OLED panels by filing a complaint with the US International Trade Commission for patent infringement. Samsung alleged that these products violated its intellectual property rights, including its “diamond pixel” technology, which uses a diamond arrangement of red, blue and green pixel dots to optimize the visual clarity of OLED display panels. In response, the ITC launched an investigation into BOE, although Samsung’s complaint did not mention specific display suppliers. It was reported that this might be related to BOE’s “Blue Diamond” pixel arrangement f-OLED screen launched in August last year.

Samsung Display’s choice of targeting importers rather than directly confronting Chinese manufacturers seems to have provoked a “fierce response” from Chinese display makers. In early May 2023, BOE filed a series of patent infringement lawsuits against Samsung and its subsidiaries in China. The first hearing was originally scheduled to be held on May 18 at the Chongqing First Intermediate People’s Court, but it did not proceed as scheduled due to jurisdictional objections. Now, Chinese display makers are collectively aiming to invalidate an OLED patent of Samsung Display in the US.

It is worth noting that the patent invalidation trial has not yet begun, as the Patent Trial and Appeal Board is currently assessing whether to initiate an inter partes review. An inter partes review will be initiated if at least one of the multiple claims of the patent subject to invalidation is acknowledged to have “a reasonable likelihood of accepting an invalidity claim”. In this case, further developments will elucidate the potential implications for the parties involved and the broader display manufacturing industry.