LEDs ♦ news digest
Everlight fought back aggressively by invalidating Nichia’s patent in issue in the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) the same year. Last July the Intellectual Property Court held in the civil lawsuit that the patent is invalid and that there are no legal grounds for the claim of TWD 80 million in damages.
In March 2011 the IP Court in the administrative procedure further ordered the TIPO to revoke Nichia’s patent in issue. Nichia appealed, yet in October the Taiwan Supreme Administrative Court affirmed the IP Court’s decision, upholding that Nichia’s patent is invalid and granting victory to Everlight. Soon after this, in November the Taiwan Supreme Court dismissed Nichia’s appeal in the civil infringement lawsuit, and Everlight won final victory over Nichia in both administrative and civil actions.
Everlight has since brought an unfair competition lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court (on 1st Dec 2011) and sought an order compelling Nichia to stop issuing press releases alleging baseless patent infringements in an attempt to affect Everlight’s goodwill.
Nichia have repeatedly proclaimed that LED manufacturers and distributors should respect its patent rights, and according to Everlight, Nichia says on its website that Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese manufacturers’ recent behaviour of disregarding patent rights in the Japanese market has grown “intolerable”.
However, Everlight says that the validity of the patents Nichia used to claim infringement over Everlight’s products is questionable. As such, the firm decided, after many years of litigation against Nichia, to strike back to fully protect the interests of its customers and shareholders and to continue to bring patent invalidation lawsuits against Nichia in multiple countries.
Through the endeavours of the whole LED industry all over the world, LED technology has become the most energy-efficient, environmental-friendly, and health-oriented products now, and LED makers can manufacture and sell a range of LED products through fair market mechanisms.
Everlight says it consistently takes intellectual property rights seriously and has reached several
mutually beneficial cross-license and patent license agreements with other companies in the industry. However, the firm says that when facing unfair competition, it will strike back when appropriate and take strong moves to protect the interests of its customers and clients.
Soraa secures $88 million in funding
Funding by Khosla Ventures and NEA will help to develop and commercialise blue and green lasers grown on non-polar and semi-polar gallium nitride substrates.
Soraa, a developer of laser diodes for consumer, biomedical, defence, and industrial applications, has closed on $88.6 million in fresh capital, according to a SEC regulatory filing.
The funding for the Fremont, California-based laser start-up has come from Khosla Ventures and NEA. Soraa lists its director and NEA general partner Ravi Viswanathan on the new filing.
Soraa, which was founded by the UCSB academics Shuji Nakamura, Steve DenBaars, and Jim Speck, is developing lasers on semi-polar and non-polar GaN substrates.
The benefits that these new planes deliver, in terms of device performance and architecture, will be discussed during a talk given by James W. Raring, VP Laser Engineering of Soraa, at the CS Europe Conference 2012. At this meeting in Frankfurt he will be presenting a talk entitled “III-Nitride Lasers Based on Nonpolar/Semipolar Substrates”.
Register at
www.cseurope.net & book your delegate place now as numbers will be limited. The conference takes place on 12th/13th March 2012 at Hilton Hotel, Frankfurt, Germany.
Bridgelux in Forbes’ most promising 100 list
The developer and manufacturer of LED lighting technologies and products was ranked 58th on
November/December 2011
www.compoundsemiconductor.net 59
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