Audio Video News

Both Dwin Electronics and Faroudja announced satisfaction last week in the resolution of a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by Faroudja a little over one year ago. According to Faroudja, the patents included in the settlement relate to detecting the 3:2 pulldown sequence of film-originated video and deinterlacing techniques used to improve the picture quality of high-resolution and large-screen video displays. Financial terms of the settlement agreement between the parties were not disclosed.

Dwin, having previously won a court judgment on the primary patent issue (see previous story), says it has decided to cease hostilities. In its statement, Faroudja claims "the successful resolution of a patent lawsuit in which Faroudja had alleged that Dwin's home theater line multiplier products infringed a patent held by Faroudja and a patent licensed exclusively to Faroudja for the relevant field of use." Faroudja's Glenn W. Marschel, Jr. adds, "We are pleased with the resolution of this litigation and will continue to vigorously protect and assert our intellectual property rights."

Regarding the settlement, Dwin's Jeff Klida states that "Our technology and our integrity were vindicated in the Court's Summary Judgment ruling last February, and at no time was Dwin found to have infringed any patent. It became clear that recovery of court costs was increasingly unlikely. With these factors in mind, we felt it was in the best interest of Dwin and Dwin customers to move on. This case merely strengthened our resolve to bring [our] video products to the consumer market, to do so at reasonable prices, and to manufacture them right here in the States."