Defendant
3 cases as defendant.
Kinik Company (Chinese: 中國砂輪企業股份有限公司; short name "KINIK" / 中砂) is a Taiwanese industrial manufacturer founded in 1953 and headquartered at No. 64 Zhongshan Road, Yingge District, New Taipei City, Taiwan. It has been listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 1560 since 2005. Public disclosure materials put worldwide headcount at roughly 2,400 employees (about 1,800–1,900 in Taiwan), with manufacturing in Taiwan, Thailand and Japan, and subsidiaries in Japan, Thailand and mainland China. Consolidated 2025 revenue was approximately NT$8.15 billion, and it is an independent public company rather than a subsidiary of a larger group.
The company makes abrasive, cutting and semiconductor-process consumables, organized in three business units: ABU (conventional and diamond/CBN grinding wheels, diamond dressers, CVD diamond coatings), DBU (CMP diamond disks / pad conditioners used to dress polishing pads in chemical-mechanical planarization, including for advanced nodes), and SBU (test and reclaimed/recycled 8" and 12" silicon wafers, plus vacuum chucks and dicing blades). Semiconductor-related products are reported to account for roughly 80% of revenue. It is an operating manufacturer, not a patent-assertion entity.
Its tracked litigation is entirely with Dr. Chien-Min ("James") Sung, the inventor with whom Kinik formed a 1996 joint venture covering brazed diamond tool technology. Kinik appears three times as a defendant in Sung-filed suits in the District of Delaware (2014 actions, docketed 1:14-cv-01027 among them, and 1:20-cv-00247 in 2020) and twice as petitioner in AIA reviews at the PTAB (IPR2014-01523 and a 2021 proceeding, IPR2021-00638, on U.S. Patent 9,724,802, "CMP Pad Dressers Having Leveled Tips"). It is therefore a two-way but predominantly defensive litigant: an operating company responding to infringement claims over CMP pad conditioner patents while separately challenging validity.
External context: the 2014 Delaware case was stayed pending parallel ownership litigation in Taiwan, and the dispute centers on ownership and licensing of diamond-disk/CMP pad dresser patents — the same technology Sung has asserted in the Eastern District of Texas against semiconductor manufacturers such as Samsung and Texas Instruments.
Chien-Min Sung sued Kinik Company in D. Del. The Delaware action asserted U.S. 9,724,802, not the '862 patent. The '862 appears as a parent/family patent in the related dispute; the case was closed.
Dr. Chien-Min Sung sued Kinik Company and Wafertech LLC in the District of Delaware asserting three U.S. patents. The court stayed the case on January 20, 2016, and later administratively closed it pending Taiwan ownership/rights litigation and appeals. The narrative does not itemize the three patents and cannot confirm that US 7,762,872 was among them.
Patent infringement action filed by Dr. Chien-Min Sung against Kinik Company in the District of Delaware. The narrative ties US 8,777,699 to this action and notes Kinik later described the 2014 action as asserting three US patents, but only the '699 patent is specifically identified here. The court stayed the case on January 20, 2016 due to parallel Taiwan litigation, then administratively closed it; secondary sources report voluntary dismissal, with no merits judgment on infringement or validity.