Following that announcement, Brett Kingstone of Super Vision was quick to respond to reassure his supporters and place the implications of the ruling in perspective. He told us: "The ruling was based on a technical procedural issue, and not on any merits in the case, including any merits on those three claims [by] Super Vision. In fact Color Kinetics did win a minor victory in this summary judgment, which unfortunately is one of a string of minor victories that are based primarily on procedural and discovery matters. None of these decisions have dealt with the fundamental merits of this case or the issue of whether or not their technology was based on prior art practiced in the industry. We will file a motion for reconsideration on this ruling with the court; however we have can not in any way determine if we will be granted a hearing on this matter. The motion that that was ruled on yesterday was done so without a hearing."
Kingstone added that the ruling only concerned Super Vision's counter claims for anti-competitive behaviour, and does not limit existing claims for invalidation of CK's patents due to prior art. "Super Vision continues to seek discovery and take depositions, despite what we believe to be Color Kinetics' attempts to block that discovery and depositions. To date, although Super Vision's employees, officers and attorneys have submitted themselves for deposition, not one single Color Kinetics staff member has presented themselves for depositions in these two separate cases, despite the filing and service of several subpoenas. Super Vision is addressing those issues to the court as well."
Kingstone concluded: "We just want to confirm to our supporters that regardless of the legal wrangling in this case we are still confident that on both the evidence and the facts we have a basis to convince the jury that the patents were in fact filed on prior art used throughout our industry for many years prior to the patent filing by Color Kinetics."
In a separate development, CKI revealed an agreement with veteran product developer David Cunningham to jointly develop "advanced, intelligent solid-state lighting solutions for high-performance entertainment, theatrical and architectural applications" which will be marketed worldwide by CKI. The eccentric Cunningham, who has designed a number of commercially successful lighting products, including ETC's Source Four fixture and Sensor dimmer lines, was profiled in L&SI magazine in January 2005. The article can be read here.
CKI say that Cunningham's expertise will be applied to developing "products that merge its intelligent LED control technologies with system requirements tailored to the needs of various applications," adding that such products "will also apply the collective intellectual property of both Cunningham and Color Kinetics."
Finally, the latest news from CKI is financial, with the announcement of its results for the first quarter of 2005. Revenues for the quarter, say the company, were a record $11.5 million, an increase of 40% from the $8.2 million reported in the first quarter of 2004. Net income for the first quarter increased to $672,000 from the $330,000 reported in the first quarter of 2004.
(Lee Baldock)
