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Commitments and Contingencies | 3 Months Ended
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Sep. 29, 2013
Commitments and Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract] |
Commitments and Contingencies | Commitments and Contingencies Warranties The following table summarizes the changes in the Company's product warranty liabilities (in thousands):
| Three Months Ended
| September 29, 2013
Balance at beginning of period |  | $6,171 |
Warranties accrued in current period | 553 |
Changes in estimates for pre-existing warranties | (430 | )
Expenditures | (312 | )
Balance at end of period |  | $5,982 |
Product warranties are estimated and recognized at the time the Company recognizes revenue. The warranty periods range from 90 days to 10 years. The Company accrues warranty liabilities at the time of sale, based on historical and projected incident rates and expected future warranty costs. The warranty reserves, which are primarily related to Lighting Products, are evaluated on a quarterly basis based on various factors including historical warranty claims, assumptions about the frequency of warranty claims, and assumptions about the frequency of product failures derived from quality testing, field monitoring and the Company's reliability estimates. As of September 29, 2013, $942 thousand of the Company's product warranty liabilities were classified as long-term. Litigation The Company is currently a party to various legal proceedings, including those described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal 2013. The following is provided as an update to the Company's legal proceedings as contained in that report. Unless otherwise indicated, the potential losses for claims against the Company in these matters are not reasonably estimable. Cooper Lighting Litigation Ruud Lighting, Inc. filed a complaint for patent infringement against Cooper Lighting, LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on April 2, 2010. The complaint as amended seeks injunctive relief and damages for infringement of two U.S. patents owned by Ruud Lighting: No. 7,686,469, entitled "LED Lighting Fixture"; and No. 7,891,835, entitled “Light-Directed Apparatus with Protected Reflector-Shield and Lighting Fixture Utilizing Same.” On May 23, 2012, Ruud Lighting filed a second complaint for patent infringement against Cooper Lighting, LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The complaint seeks injunctive relief and damages for infringement of a third U.S. patent owned by Ruud Lighting, No. 7,952,262, entitled “Modular LED Unit Incorporating Interconnected Heat Sinks Configured To Mount and Hold Adjacent LED Modules." In each of these actions Cooper Lighting has filed an answer and counterclaims in which it denies any infringement and seeks a declaratory judgment that the asserted claims of the patents are invalid. On February 19, 2013, the Company, as successor-in-interest to Ruud Lighting, Inc., filed a third complaint for patent infringement against Cooper Lighting in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The complaint seeks injunctive relief and damages for infringement of two U.S. patents owned by the Company, No. 8,282,239, entitled “Light-Directing Apparatus with Protected Reflector-Shield and Lighting Fixture Utilizing Same” and No. 8,070,306, entitled “LED Lighting Fixture.” Cooper Lighting, LLC filed a complaint for patent infringement against the Company and Ruud Lighting, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on September 7, 2012. The complaint seeks injunctive relief and damages for infringement of one U.S. patent owned by Cooper Lighting, LLC: No. 8,210,722, entitled "LED Device for Wide Beam Generation." The Company has filed an answer in which it denies any infringement and asserts that the patent is invalid as well as other defenses. Illumination Management Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of Cooper Lighting, LLC, filed a complaint for patent infringement against Ruud Lighting in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on June 7, 2010. The action was later transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. As amended in January 2012, the complaint alleged that Ruud Lighting is infringing two U.S. patents owned by Illumination Management Solutions, No. 7,674,018 and No. 7,993,036, each entitled "LED Device for Wide Beam Generation." It also alleged that Ruud Lighting and its then president, Alan Ruud, who served on the plaintiff's board of directors in 2006 and 2007 when Ruud Lighting was a shareholder of the plaintiff, conspired to misuse confidential information obtained from the plaintiff to file patent applications and to obtain patents assigned to Ruud Lighting. The complaint sought injunctive relief, damages and ownership of the patent applications and patents alleged to have been wrongfully filed and obtained. The court in October 2012 granted partial summary judgment in favor of Ruud Lighting, finding that most of the accused products did not infringe either of the asserted patents. The court in February 2013 entered final judgment in which the court 1) dismissed the claims relating to most of the accused products, finding that they did not infringe either of the asserted patents; 2) dismissed with prejudice and with the consent of the parties the claims with respect to the remaining accused products; 3) severed the conspiracy claim, which was subsequently voluntarily dismissed; and 4) dismissed the remaining claims and counterclaims without prejudice. In March 2013, the plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal from this judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Ruud Lighting is a defendant in an action commenced by Illumination Management Solutions in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on June 8, 2010 and later transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. As amended in January 2013, the complaint names as defendants Ruud Lighting and two of its employees, Alan Ruud and Christopher Ruud, and asserts that the defendants engaged in wrongful acts arising out of the relationship between the plaintiff and Ruud Lighting in 2006 and 2007 when Ruud Lighting was a shareholder of the plaintiff and Alan Ruud served on the plaintiff's board of directors. The complaint alleges that the defendants breached fiduciary duties and otherwise acted improperly by pursuing a plan to compete with the plaintiff and that the defendants misused information obtained from the plaintiff as fiduciaries and subject to a non-disclosure agreement. These allegedly wrongful acts included filing patent applications and obtaining patents assigned to Ruud Lighting on inventions claimed by the plaintiff. The complaint also alleges that Ruud Lighting: 1) marketed its LED products without reference to certain optical technology claimed by the plaintiff, thereby breaching a marketing agreement with the plaintiff and engaging in unfair competition and false advertising; and 2) breached the marketing agreement by failing to give the plaintiff a right of first refusal to integrate the plaintiff's optical technology into Ruud Lighting LED products. The complaint further alleges that the plaintiff is entitled to a correction of the inventors named in one or more patents to add a founder of the plaintiff as an inventor. The complaint seeks to recover damages, all profits and other gains realized by defendants as a result of the acts complained of, attorneys' fees, ownership of any interest in the patent applications and patents alleged to have been wrongfully filed and obtained, and correction of the named inventors on one or more patents. In September 2013, the Company and the Cooper Lighting and Illumination Management Solutions parties reached a binding term sheet agreement to settle all six cases. This non-cash settlement agreement provides for a royalty-free cross license of all of the patents-in-suit in the six cases for the life of the patents; a royalty-free cross license of each of the Company’s and Cooper Lighting’s LED luminaire patent portfolios for 7 years (with carve-outs of the Company’s LED chip, LED component and LED replacement lamp patents from the cross license, as well as carve-outs for certain LED luminaires of Cooper Lighting that are not for general illumination); and a supply agreement, with no minimum purchase commitment and with a 7 year term, whereby the Company may sell Cooper Lighting LED components and modules. The parties are negotiating the terms of the definitive agreements to effect this binding agreement. The Company recorded a $17.4 million non-cash litigation settlement charge in the first quarter of fiscal 2014, representing the current estimated fair value of the patent licenses to be provided to the Cooper Lighting and Illumination Management Solutions parties in excess of the fair value patent license rights to be received by the Company under the terms of the proposed cross license agreement. This $17.4 million obligation will be amortized into income over the reminder of the 7 year license period. In conjunction with the September 2013 settlement with the Cooper Lighting and Illumination Management Solutions parties, the Company also recorded a $17.4 million offset to the non-cash litigation charge to reflect the amount receivable by the Company from the Stock Purchase Agreement escrow funds, including cash and common stock consideration, pursuant to a letter agreement approved by the Audit Committee, which the Company entered into during September 2013 with Christopher Ruud, acting as the Seller Representative for the former Ruud Lighting shareholders. The escrow consideration will be provided to the Company upon the execution of the final settlement agreement with the Cooper Lighting and Illumination Management Solutions parties. The Fox Group Litigation The Fox Group, Inc. filed a complaint for patent infringement against the Company in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on June 29, 2010. The complaint, which sought injunctive relief and damages, asserted that the Company was infringing two U.S. patents relating to high quality silicon carbide material: No. 6,534,026, entitled "Low Defect Density Silicon Carbide" (the "'026 patent"); and No. 6,562,130, entitled "Low Defect Axially Grown Single Crystal Silicon Carbide" (the "'130 patent"). The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Company in August 2011. The court determined that the Company did not infringe the '026 patent and that the claims of the '130 patent asserted against the Company are invalid. The Fox Group appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which affirmed the judgment. The Fox Group's petition for a rehearing with the Federal Circuit was denied in February 2013 and the Fox Group filed a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2013. The U.S. Supreme court denied the writ of certiorari on October 15, 2013, thereby exhausting the Fox Group’s appeals in this matter.

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