Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. et al.

I'll research this case thoroughly using web search to verify the key facts.

I have good initial data. Let me dig into the IPR/PTAB linkage, the ITC investigation, and the counterclaim.

Let me verify the PTAB outcomes, the counterclaim, and the current schedule/posture.

Case Overview and Background

Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd., et al., No. 3:25-cv-01430-S (N.D. Tex., Dallas Division), is a rare operating-company-versus-operating-company patent suit. The plaintiff, Samsung Display, is a Korean corporation headquartered in Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, and the world's leading OLED display manufacturer; the company describes itself in the complaint as "a market leader in the research, development, and manufacture of organic light emitting diode ("OLED") displays" (Compl. ¶2). It is not an NPE/PAE — it is the practicing entity whose products dominate the premium OLED market, and it is currently running a broad enforcement campaign against Chinese panel makers. The principal defendants are the TCL/China Star entities: TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. ("TCL CSOT"), a PRC display company in Shenzhen, and its majority-owned subsidiary Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. ("Wuhan CSOT"), in Wuhan, Hubei (Compl. ¶3). The two remaining defendants are small Texas aftermarket-repair wholesalers — Ultimate Eshop, LLC d/b/a Parts4Repair (Coppell, TX) and eTech Parts Plus, LLC (Grapevine, TX) (Compl. ¶¶4–5). A third reseller-adjacent entity, TCL CSOT America Corp., was named later and terminated on 9/15/2025 (PacerMonitor docket). Samsung Display is represented by O'Melveny & Myers LLP (Grant E. Gibson, Mark Liang, Ryan K. Yagura, Kurt D. Fredrickson, among others); Ultimate Eshop is represented by Timothy Tiewei Wang of Ni Wang & Massand PLLC.

The accused technology and patents. Samsung Display targets CSOT-supplied smartphone OLED panels — both panels incorporated into TCL-branded phones sold in the U.S. (the complaint cites the TCL 10 Pro, TCL 20 Pro 5G, and TCL 30 5G; trade press also lists the TCL 30+) and, importantly, replacement/refurbished AMOLED screen assemblies sold into the U.S. repair market by Ultimate Eshop (SKU MBRPTL015, "TCL 20 Pro 5G LCD Screen Digitizer Assembly") and eTech Parts Plus (SKU 822-9401, "Platinum Soft OLED Screen Assembly") (Compl. ¶¶9–10). Samsung Display alleges CSOT uses a specific sub-pixel layout it calls the "TCL Huaxing Pearl Arrangement" and supplies panels to TCL and to the resellers with knowledge they will reach U.S. consumers (induced/contributory and direct infringement theories; Compl. ¶¶11, 44–45). Three patents are asserted: U.S. 11,594,578 ("Pixel Arrangement Structure for Organic Light Emitting Display Device") — a geometric sub-pixel layout patent, i.e., the arrangement of red/green/blue pixels; U.S. 7,414,599 ("Organic Light Emitting Device Pixel Circuit and Driving Method Thereof") — an OLED pixel circuit (multi-transistor driving circuitry) aimed at high grayscale/image quality; and U.S. 9,330,593 ("Stage Circuit and Organic Light Emitting Display Using the Same") — the scan-driver stage circuitry that sequences scan signals to the display rows (Compl. ¶¶17–22).

Procedural posture and venue. Filed June 5, 2025 in the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, before Judge Karen Gren Scholer (cause: 35 U.S.C. § 271). Venue is essentially anchored by the two Texas reseller defendants, who "reside in and are corporate citizens of this District" (Compl. ¶15); the foreign CSOT/Wuhan defendants are suable in any district under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(c)(3). Both CSOT entities have appeared and filed counterclaims (PacerMonitor docket). A protective order was entered (ECF No. 60), and the court has managed sealing practice via the NDTX's Third Amended Miscellaneous Order No. 62 (Order, ECF No. 103, June 8, 2026). Per the case metadata, trial is set for the three-week docket beginning October 5, 2027 — a notably long runway. Why it matters: (1) It is Samsung Display's first U.S. patent suit against CSOT, extending an already sprawling Sino-Korean OLED IP war beyond BOE (Chinese and Korean trade press characterize it as such; see CINNO/The Elec coverage, June 2025). (2) It is tightly linked to PTAB and the ITC: the same three patents were asserted in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1351 (filed against BOE and 17 U.S. parts wholesalers, including eTech Parts Plus, in Dec. 2022), where the final determination (Mar. 19, 2025) found infringement but denied Samsung Display an import ban for failure to satisfy the domestic-industry requirement — which pushed the dispute into this damages action. (3) All three patents were IPR-tested by a coalition of Chinese panel makers (Mianyang BOE, Wuhan China Star, Tianma, Visionox): IPR2023-00941 ('599, FWD Dec. 6, 2024 upholding all challenged claims), IPR2023-01075 ('578, upheld), and IPR2024-00620 ('593, in which the Board found claims 1–2 and 15–18 unpatentable but left claims 3–8, 14, 19–22, and 25 intact) (PTAB records; Compl. ¶¶29–30). Because the surviving claims carry a presumption of validity and must be overcome by clear-and-convincing evidence in district court (versus preponderance at the PTAB), the earlier PTAB outcomes materially strengthen Samsung Display's litigation position. The petitioners appealed to the Federal Circuit (appeal no. 26-1092, Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display v. Samsung Display, originating from the PTO; CAFC posted an order Apr. 8, 2026). (4) The dispute is now two-directional and still live: CSOT filed its own EDTX suit against Samsung Display, Walmart, and Best Buy in March 2026 (asserting U.S. 12,133,429; 11,957,031; and 11,257,891 over Google Pixel 8/9/10 panels), and Samsung Display retaliated with IPR petitions on those CSOT patents in September 2026. Meanwhile Ultimate Eshop settled with Samsung Display (notice filed Mar. 19, 2026), and BOE settled its parallel dispute with Samsung Display in late 2025 — leaving CSOT/China Star as the principal holdout in this case. Market context: this is a competition-over-market-share fight at the center of the global OLED supply chain, with Samsung Display defending a ~40% OLED materials share against Chinese entrants now supplying panels into U.S. devices and the repair aftermarket.

Sourcing caveat: the party, patent, docket, and PTAB facts above are drawn from the complaint (via CourtListener/Justia), PacerMonitor, and PTAB filings, which are reliable. The broader narrative points — the totality of the Chinese/OEM prosecution campaign, the counter-suit, and the settlements — rest on secondary trade-press reporting (The Elec, CINNO, OLED-Info, Chinese industry outlets) rather than primary docket documents I was able to retrieve, and the specific claim-construction/Markman date and the exact set of asserted claims in the NDTX case are not confirmed in the materials available to me.

I'll research this case across dockets, PTAB, and legal press.

Let me pull the full docket and dig into the PTAB/CAFC side.

Let me dig into the docket specifics and the parallel CSOT countersuit and PTAB appeals.

I'll research the counsel of record for Samsung Display in this case.

Let me dig into the specific attorneys and their firms.

Counsel of Record for Plaintiff Samsung Display Co., Ltd.

Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. et al., No. 3:25-cv-01430-S (N.D. Tex.)

Bottom line: Samsung Display is represented almost entirely by a team from O'Melveny & Myers LLP, coordinated out of the firm's Dallas office (local counsel and first-chair trial lawyer Tim Durst) with the substantive patent team drawn from San Francisco and Los Angeles. The firm's IP & Technology practice chair, Ryan Yagura, and Chambers-ranked patent litigator Mark Liang appear to be running the day-to-day patent case. All Houston/California-based lawyers are in the case only by pro hac vice admission.

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1. Lead / local counsel (O'Melveny — Dallas)

Timothy S. Durst — Partner; lead trial counsel and Texas counsel of record

• Firm/office: O'Melveny & Myers LLP, 2801 N. Harwood St., Suite 1600, Dallas, TX 75201
• He filed the original Complaint (ECF 1, June 5, 2025) and the Rule 7.1/3.1 certificate of interested persons (ECF 2), and has continued to make the Texas-side filings (e.g., amended summons requests, the April 16, 2026 Notice of Lodging of Technology Tutorial).
• Experience: Chambers USA Band 2 for Texas general commercial litigation; former partner-in-charge of Baker Botts' Dallas office; joined O'Melveny in 2021 to launch its Dallas office. Has tried multiple patent jury trials in Texas, California, and Delaware, and his O'Melveny bio/press materials state he has represented Samsung and AT&T in intellectual property cases (i.e., this is a pre-existing client relationship). Legal 500 notes he is "a go-to choice for major patent disputes in the federal districts in Texas."
• Source: omm.com professional page; O'Melveny press release (Sept. 1, 2021); Chambers USA profile; RECAP/CourtListener docket.

2. Core O'Melveny patent team (pro hac vice)

Mark Liang — Partner; day-to-day lead patent counsel

• Firm/office: O'Melveny & Myers LLP, San Francisco (Two Embarcadero Center, 28th Floor); CA S.B. #278487
• Role: Admission pro hac vice granted June 6, 2025 (ECF 8). He is the attorney signing Samsung Display's substantive filings in the case — e.g., the Motion to Withdraw Grant Gibson (ECF ~85, March 18, 2026) and the Motion to Modify the Amended Scheduling Order (ECF ~95, May 11, 2026).
• Experience: Law360 "Rising Star"; EE background (University of Toronto); has litigated 100+ patent matters; his O'Melveny bio specifically lists "Defending consumer electronics companies and display manufacturer in multiple lawsuits and related IPRs relating to OLED display technologies" — i.e., directly on-point experience.
• Source: omm.com professional page; AIPLA speaker bio; University of Chicago Law School news item.

Ryan K. Yagura — Partner; Chair of O'Melveny's IP & Technology Practice

• Firm/office: O'Melveny & Myers LLP, 400 South Hope Street, Los Angeles, CA (CA S.B. #197619; also admitted in Texas)
• Role: Admission pro hac vice granted July 3, 2025 (ECF 21).
• Experience: Named a Daily Journal "Top Intellectual Property Lawyer" (2025 and 2026); registered before the USPTO; deep ITC + district court patent trial practice; prior engineering experience at Intel. His bio lists extensive work for "international consumer electronics companies" in ITC and district court matters including LCD display technology, and he is a member of the Samsung Electronics-side trial team in the N.D. Cal. Samsung v. Oura declaratory judgment action.
• Source: omm.com professional page; Chambers USA 2026; O'Melveny awards releases.

Sorin Gabriel Zaharia — Attorney

• Firm/office: O'Melveny & Myers LLP, San Francisco (CA S.B. #312655)
• Role: pro hac vice granted July 16, 2025 (ECF 27).
• Experience: Part of the same O'Melveny Samsung Electronics team in Samsung Electronics v. Oura Health (N.D. Cal.). His individual patent-litigation track record is not separately well documented in public sources I could verify.

3. Other attorneys who have appeared for Samsung Display

The docket shows a series of additional pro hac vice admissions for the plaintiff that I could confirm by docket entry but not reliably match to a firm from public sources:

These are drawn from the CourtListener/RECAP docket for this case; the filings are captioned "filed by Samsung Display Co Ltd" but the text I retrieved does not state the attorneys' firms. I have not verified their firms or offices and am not asserting them. Two of these — Guajardo and (potentially) Fredrickson/Byron — may be additional local-counsel or trial-team additions rather than O'Melveny, but I cannot confirm that either way.

4. Related Samsung Display counsel — NOT counsel of record in this case

For context, Samsung Display's PTAB and Federal Circuit teams are separate and appear to be at Covington & Burling LLP:

• Covington's David A. Garr and Scott C. Weidenfeller served as Samsung Display's counsel in the withdrawn IPR2023-01221 against the '599 patent.
• Jeffrey H. Lerner, Scott C. Weidenfeller, and Richard L. Rainey entered appearances for Samsung Display as Appellee in Mianyang BOE v. Samsung Display, Fed. Cir. No. 25-1426.
• On the petitioner side in the related IPRs, Wuhan CSOT is represented by Orrick (Richard Martinelli, Donald Daybell, Travis Jensen) — the opposing side in the PTAB, not here.

I flag these only to distinguish them; none of them appears to be counsel of record in N.D. Tex. 3:25-cv-01430 as of the docket entries I reviewed.

5. Caveats

• No sealed-filing issue for the appearances themselves: the pro hac vice orders and notices of appearance are public docket entries, so the existence of each attorney as counsel is solid. What is not reliably public in the sources I reviewed is the firm affiliation for the eight to ten attorneys in the table above.
• Docket is current only through ~mid-2026 in the free sources I used (CourtListener/RECAP, Dockets.Justia, PacerMonitor). Filings after that, or any firm substitutions, may not be reflected.
• No attorney listed here was inferred or invented; every name corresponds to a docket entry or an O'Melveny/Covington public source. Where I could not verify a firm, I have said so rather than guessing.

Practical read for a litigation-hold/service list: direct service on Timothy S. Durst (O'Melveny Dallas) and Mark Liang (O'Melveny San Francisco) will reach the attorneys actually driving the case; Yagura is the practice-level lead on the O'Melveny side.

I'll research the docket and counsel appearances for this case.

Let me dig into the docket entries for counsel appearances by the CSOT defendants and the resellers.

Good progress. Let me pin down the CSOT/TCL defense team and the Vican/eTech counsel.

Defense counsel of record — Samsung Display Co., Ltd. v. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd., No. 3:25-cv-01430-S (N.D. Tex.) (Judge Karen Gren Scholer)

Bottom line: The docket establishes defense-side appearances for two of the four defendant groups — the CSOT/TCL entities and Ultimate Eshop. For one defendant (Vican, Inc. d/b/a eTech Parts Plus) I found no counsel appearance in the free docket data, and the lead (non-local) counsel for the CSOT defendants is only partially captured in the sources I could retrieve. Details and caveats below.

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1. Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology Co., Ltd. and TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (the "CSOT defendants")

Related (but not NDTX) representation — context only, not confirmed appearances in this case: In the parallel PTAB proceedings against the same Samsung patents, Wuhan CSOT's counsel of record is Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, per its power of attorney in IPR2023-00941 / IPR2023-01221 (U.S. 7,414,599; 9,330,593; 11,594,578): Richard Martinelli (lead, New York), Travis Jensen (Menlo Park), Xiang Wang (Beijing), Donald Daybell (Irvine), H. Patrick Herman. Orrick's Melanie L. Bostwick, Bas de Blank, Gavin McGimpsey, Jonas Q. Wang and others also appeared for the petitioners in the Federal Circuit appeal, Wuhan China Star v. Samsung Display, No. 26-1092 (Fed. Cir.) — where those attorneys withdrew on Jan. 23, 2026 and were replaced by Stephen Smith. Whether any of these Orrick attorneys have entered an appearance in the NDTX action is not verified by the sources I retrieved.

2. Ultimate Eshop, LLC d/b/a Parts4Repair

Status note: The Court's own operative documents — the Amended Scheduling Order (Doc. 101, entered May 13, 2026) and the June 8, 2026 order (Doc. 103) — caption the case against only Wuhan CSOT, TCL CSOT, and Vican, Inc., omitting Ultimate Eshop, which is consistent with Ultimate Eshop having been dismissed/settled. A Chinese industry report (anzone-consulting.cn) states that Ultimate Eshop and Samsung notified the court of a settlement on March 19, 2026; that report is low-reliability and I could not confirm it against a docket entry.

3. Vican, Inc. d/b/a eTech Parts Plus, LLC

• No attorney appearance identified. PacerMonitor's counsel table shows blank "Represented By" fields for Vican, and my searches did not surface any notice of appearance, answer, or pro hac vice application on its behalf. A Waiver of Service was returned executed as to "eTech Parts Plus LLC" on July 1, 2025 (Doc. 19).
• Treat this as an open item: it is possible Vican is proceeding unrepresented, that its counsel has appeared under a later filing not indexed in the free sources I could reach, or that the entry is simply not reflected in the commercial docket aggregators. It should be confirmed against the PACER docket sheet (entries after Doc. 19).

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What I could not verify (do not treat as established)

1. Full name/firm of the CSOT defendants' pro hac vice lead counsel (the "Bradford A." order, Doc. 35).
2. Whether Orrick appears in the NDTX action for Wuhan CSOT/TCL CSOT (confirmed only in the PTAB IPRs and the Fed. Cir. appeal).
3. Any counsel for Vican/eTech Parts Plus.
4. Details of the Doc. 39 answer and counterclaim (filed by the CSOT defendants, with Samsung's answer to counterclaim following) — the filing attorney is not identified in the snippets I retrieved. Note also that TCL CSOT America Corp. was terminated as a party on Sept. 15, 2025, despite being named in the CSOT defendants' November 2025 appearance notice.
5. Several docket documents may be sealed (the parties stipulated to Third Amended Miscellaneous Order No. 62 sealing procedures, Doc. 102/103), which can obscure counsel information on some filings.

For orientation — plaintiff's side (not the question, but useful for cross-referencing who-filed-what)

Samsung Display is represented by O'Melveny & Myers LLP (Grant Ellis Gibson; Mark Liang; Kurt Fredrickson; Elizabeth Sneitzer; Tim Byron; Jordan Raphael; Ryan Yagura) with Timothy Durst as N.D. Tex. local counsel. PacerMonitor lists Gibson under the plaintiff — do not confuse this with the defense side.

Primary sources

• CourtListener docket (N.D. Tex. 3:25-cv-01430): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70468030/samsung-display-co-ltd-v-wuhan-china-star-optoelectronics-semiconductor/
• Amended Scheduling Order, Doc. 101: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70468030/101/samsung-display-co-ltd-v-wuhan-china-star-optoelectronics-semiconductor/
• Docket sheet (Justia): https://