The Shanghai High People's Court recently made its final decision in a copyright dispute involving integrated circuit, ruling in favor of Shanghai Haier Integrated Circuit Company, a Shanghai-based integrated circuit provider, denying all the requests from Microchip Technology, a microcontroller and analog semiconductor provider giant in USA, upholding the fist decision of the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court, concluding the six-year IPR disputes between the two companies.

Six-year IPR disputes

Shanghai Haier and Microchip Technology are both the micro controller unit (MCU) manufacturers, covering similar market and consumers. In 2007, Microchip Technology filed a copyright infringement case against Shanghai Haier, claiming the defendant infringed its microcode copyright in PIC16CXXX MCU products and copyright of MCU operation manuals, starting the six-year IPR conflicts. From then on, Microchip Technology challenged each patent Shanghai Haier was authorized. In 2009, Microchip Technology initiated 72 patent invalid requests and litigation, involving 23 patents. Meanwhile, Shanghai fighted back and challenged Microchip Technology's several patents.
When analyzing the two sides' disputes, insiders held that Shanghai Haier has broken the monopolization of Microchip Technology in chip technology, and has posed threat to the market potential in China.

Shanghai Haier prevails

The copyright disputes of PIC16CXXX MCU products and MCU operation manuals between the two sides are of special concern in their IPR disputes.

In the case mentioned above, Microchip Technology requested ceasing infringement, destroying infringing products, making an apology in public, also claiming 11.47 million yuan compensation for damages.

Shanghai Haier took the view that their products were totally different from those of Microchip Technology, and their chips didn't enjoy full compatibility with Microchip Technology's. Meanwhile, parameters and index were also different so no infringement constituted.

The court held that the current evidence failed to prove that Shanghai Haier verilog has copied Microchip Technology's C language, and also failed to demonstrate the two languages generated same code. Even if there was similar code, the evidence failed to prove that the code was generated by Microchip Technology's copyrighted program.

The court held that based on the 40 similarities Microchip Technology asserted, some of the descriptions were lack of originality and were not covered by copyright. The court held that due to the limited description features of the scientific writing, it's inevitable to produce similarity to some extent, and if the similarities were not totally identical, no copying was constituted.

Disgruntled Microchip Technology then appealed to the Shanghai High People's Court, which later made the decision above.

(China IP News)