SK Innovation, Seoul, Korea, (SKI) has announced that an ITC’s (US International Trade Commission) administrative law judge rejected LG Energy Solution (LGES)’s “motion for sanctions” in a patent lawsuit (case number: 337-1179) filed by SKI against LGES with the ITC in September, 2019.
ITC’s administrative law judge dismissed LGES’ claim that frames SKI for “having deleted documents” and therefore, the false accusation will be denied in the patent lawsuit
In August, 2020, LGES requested the ITC to impose 5 sanctions against SKI on the ground of “deletion of documents”. Chief ALJ Charles E. Bullock, the ITC administrative law judge, however, ruled that the Commission rejects the motion because it is without any evidence from LGES other than cursory statement, and the documents are not actually deleted and still exist on SKI’s systems and not relevant to this investigation.
LGES has been taking a strategy where it tries to frame SKI by making a groundless and malicious accusation of “deletion of documents” since it was sued by SKI in the patent lawsuit. However, the judge’s ruling made it clear that LGES’ claim is unfounded and unsubstantiated.
An SKI official said, “The ruling puts a brake on LGES’s lawsuit strategy which is about claiming “deletion of documents” without reasonable grounds rather than trying to stand the trial fairly.” He added, “SKI will stand the trial fairly to prove that it has superior battery technology to that of LGES that differentiates its batteries.”
LGES falsely accused the inventor of the patent of deleting documents and covering up the act but “those documents still exist”
LGES further accused an employee of SKI who invented the patent of referring to its battery technology and of having deleted the reference documents intentionally trying to cover up the act. However, the judge dismissed the claim.
Not only were the documents in question preserved well but the attached files in e-mails that LGES claimed to have been deleted were saved temporarily and deleted later by Outlook automatically.
Furthermore, other files that LGES claimed to have been deleted were stored well and are public documents freely accessible to anyone on the Internet.
The ITC “rejected” LGES’s claim that SKI issued a patent of a battery technology developed from its products and hid the reference documents
LGES insisted that SKI developed the patent of battery pouches based on “A7” and had a PowerPoint file where it mentioned A7. LGES also wrongly claimed that the fact SKI stored the file on a public server means SKI has obtained and communicated in regards to A7 information. LGES also appealed SKI did not submit the file on purpose to conceal it.
However, the PowerPoint file does not mention A7 at all as SKI said in its statement and contains content that is irrelevant to “994 Patent”. Nevertheless, LGES continued to make an unsubstantiated claim. The judge rejected LGES’ claim by saying that saving the file in Teams Rooms itself does not constitute “communication” and even if it is communication, there is no evidence that the patent inventor communicated the file.
LGES claimed that a file containing the word of “LG U+ Mobile Payment” as well as empty folders had been deleted
LGES even claimed that documents that had nothing to do with the lawsuit such as documents containing words of ‘LG Household & Health Care”, “LG Electronics Event”, or “LG U+ Mobile Payment” had been deleted just because the documents contain the search word of LG. The documents were for marketing activities conducted by LG’ subsidiaries but the company accused SKI of deleting the documents simply because they include the company name.
LGES also filed a motion for sanctions against SKI with the ITC claiming that a large number of documents containing the search word of “LG” as well as empty folders had been deleted. But, the ITC rejected the motion including the request for a sanction for deletion of the marketing files.
In summary, the ITC dismissed LGES’ motion for sanctions against SKI in the patent lawsuit where LGES claimed that “a large amount of documents had been deleted and SKI attempted to cover up the deletion”. The Commission ruled on the ground that the documents were well stored, irrelevant to the investigation and public documents. It also said LGES lacked evidence to substantiate its claim, and the documents were duplicate documents that had already been submitted according to procedures.
The ITC’s decision proves that LGES’s attempt to mislead the lawsuit by unjustly framing SKI for having deleted documents without any grounds rather than trying to deal with what the lawsuit is really about would not work anymore.
