Plaintiff

Funai Electric Company Ltd.

1 case as plaintiff.

Cases
1
Active
0
1 closed
Filed
2015
Top venue
N D Cal
1 case
Also appears as a defendant in 1 case → View as defendant

Company profile

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Funai Electric Co., Ltd. (船井電機; "FUNAI") is a Japanese consumer-electronics maker founded in 1961 (with corporate roots in a 1951 sewing-machine venture) and headquartered in Daito, Osaka Prefecture. It was long listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (code 6839) until a 2021 tender offer by Shuwa System Holdings took it private; it was subsequently restructured as a subsidiary of Funai Electric Holdings (later renamed FUNAI GROUP). It reported roughly 2,100–2,900 employees over the past decade, with revenue falling from a peak of about ¥354 billion (FY2005) to tens of billions of yen by the early 2020s. On October 24, 2024, the Tokyo District Court approved the start of bankruptcy proceedings, with reported liabilities around ¥46.1 billion (Teikoku Databank).

Products/operations: Funai was an audio-visual and information-equipment manufacturer operating largely as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Its lines included LCD televisions, DVD/Blu-ray players and recorders, VHS videocassette recorders, inkjet printers, air conditioners, and audio equipment. It supplied major US retailers (notably Walmart/Sam's Club) and marketed products through its US subsidiary Funai Corporation under licensed brands including Philips, Magnavox, Emerson, and Sanyo. It ended VHS production in 2016.

Patent-litigation posture: Funai is an operating company, not an NPE. The tracked data show one case as plaintiff and one as defendant — a genuine two-way litigant rather than a mass filer. Both matters arose from standard-essential-patent disputes with semiconductor suppliers and were litigated in the Northern and Central Districts of California, not in plaintiff-friendly venues such as the Eastern District of Texas.

Notable cases: LSI Corporation et al. v. Funai Corporation, Inc. et al. (C.D. Cal., filed 2012-03-12) involved chipmaker patent claims over Wi-Fi (802.11) and video-compression (H.264/MPEG-4) technology used in Funai products. Related N.D. Cal. litigation (tracked as Funai Electric Co. v. Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore), filed 2015-09-21) saw Funai counterclaim that LSI, Agere, and Avago breached FRAND licensing commitments; a court allowed Funai's Sherman Act §2 monopolization claim to proceed in March 2017. The disputes were dismissed or settled in 2016.

Sources: Funai company profile/IP materials; Nikkei/Asahi Shimbun and Teikoku Databank bankruptcy coverage; Wikipedia; court dockets (Justia/UniCourt); PitchBook profile.

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