K.J. Pretech Co., Ltd.

Company overview. K.J. Pretech Co., Ltd. (Korean: 케이제이프리텍) was founded in October 1994 as a Korean LCD component maker, converted to a corporation in October 1999, and listed on Korea's KOSDAQ in September 2008 under ticker 083470. It is headquartered in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea (Hwaseong-si, later listed at Banwollam-gil 77, Ansan). Since a 2020 merger with EM Index, the listed entity operates as EMnI Co., Ltd. (이엠앤아이); "K.J. Pretech" is the former name associated with the litigation above. Size has contracted sharply: Minebea's 2013 alliance disclosure cited roughly 1,100 consolidated employees and KRW 7bn capital, and the company reported about KRW 130.7bn revenue in 2014; recent filings list ~23–25 employees and 2023 sales of roughly KRW 24.5bn. Minebea acquired a minority stake in 2013.

Products / services. An operating manufacturer, not a shell. Its core lines are small- and medium-sized LCD backlight units (BLUs) for mobile phones, tablets, personal media players and printers, plus precision injection-molded plastic components, molds/dies, and light guide plates, produced at facilities in China (Yantai, Huizhou) as well as Korea. The successor EMnI business has shifted toward OLED materials and components, and also distributes physics-based materials-simulation software.

Patent-litigation posture. The case data shows one plaintiff-side appearance and zero defendant-side appearances. That single appearance is a defensive one: as a component supplier to display makers, K.J. Pretech filed inter partes review petitions at the PTAB — not affirmative infringement suits — to knock out patents being asserted against its customers. This is the classic posture of an operating supplier pulled into a display-industry NPE campaign.

Notable cases. On September 11, 2015, K.J. Pretech filed IPR2015-01866, -01867 and -01868 with VIZIO (joined in 2016-910/914) against Innovative Display Technologies LLC, an Acacia Research subsidiary characterized in RPX and Unified Patents data as a patent assertion entity. The challenged patents — U.S. 8,215,816; 7,537,370; and 7,434,974 ("Light Emitting Panel Assemblies") — came from Rambus and were asserted against LCD-product makers, largely in the Eastern District of Texas. All three proceedings reached final written decisions and terminated in March 2017. K.J. Pretech's petitions followed parallel IPRs by LG Display/LG Electronics and Sony on the same family.