On Thursday, Applied Materials, Inc. (Applied) brought a suit requesting a declaratory judgment of noninfringement for two patents owned by the defendant, Demaray LLC. The lawsuit arose from Applied’s concern over complaints filed by Demaray against several of Applied’s customers, accusing them of infringing on semiconductor manufacturing patents and implicating Applied.
Applied contended that these lawsuits have “placed a cloud on Applied’s products[,] threatened Applied’s business and relationships with its customers and partners, as well as its sales of its reactors[,] and created a justiciable controversy between Applied and Demaray.”
Applied is a Silicon Valley company, self-described as “a leader in materials engineering solutions that creates technology and products used for semiconductor fabrication, including but not limited to reactors in the ‘Endura’ product line,” according to the complaint. Demaray is a limited liability company founded by Dr. Richard Ernest Demaray, a named inventor on the patents at issue. Dr. Demaray describes his namesake entity as a “Silicon Valley, CA’ company which ‘[is] about the portfolio of my patents,” formed to “provide portfolio related R&D activities, IP demonstration and development and new product application.”
The request for a judgment of noninfringement was spurred by Applied’s concern that it might be sued next, pointing to its name in the complaints against Samsung entities and Intel Corporation. For example, Applied quoted a complaint where Demaray alleged that Applied’s customers infringed on its patent by “‘making, using, offering to sell, selling, supplying or causing to supply semiconductor manufacturing equipment including reactive magnetron sputtering reactors’ also identified in the complaints as ‘from Applied Materials, Inc.’”
The complaint contended that “Applied’s reactors in the ‘Endura’ product line do not directly or indirectly infringe any claim of the Asserted Patents.” It then briefly explained how its products differ in composition and follow different processes.
The plaintiff is represented by Paul Hastings LLP.