A lawsuit filed by Nichia against Tachibana Eletech and E&E Japan, which companies imported and/or sold Blue LEDs manufactured by a Taiwanese company, Everlight Electronics, the Tokyo District Court found that the importation/sale of those Blue LEDs by E&E and Tachibana constituted infringement of Nichia's patent. However, Everlight refuted that it respects the court’s judgement as JP3972943 expired on July 6, 2014. Therefore, the infringement will not have negative impact on the company’s products.

JPS is announcing that its Smart LED Streetlight Project, received a major boost last week, with the official signing of a partnership, which will see over US$425,000 or more than J$50Million, being granted to JPS by the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).  The grant will be used to provide technical support for the project, which will include the conversion of 105,000 streetlights across Jamaica – from the use of traditional High Pressure Sodium bulbs to Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs.  This development will not only be an important aspect of the Company’s energy efficiency drive, but also an underlying component of the smart grid, which JPS is developing to take Jamaica’s electricity network to a more advanced level.

Universal Display Corporation, enabling energy-efficient displays and lighting with its UniversalPHOLED® technology and materials, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Adesis, Inc. Adesis is a privately held contract research organization (CRO) with 43 employees specializing in organic and organometallic synthetic research, development, and commercialization. Adesis is a critical technology vendor to companies in the pharmaceutical, fine chemical, biomaterials, and catalyst industries, and has worked with Universal Display over the last few years to help advance and accelerate a number of Universal Display’s product offerings.

Elemental LED, a leading U.S. based engineering and technology company that manufactures LED lighting solutions announced today a partnership with Focus Electrical Sales Inc. that extends its award winning Diode LED product brand into Canada. Elemental LED and its manufacturing and wholesale division, Diode LED, provides a wide variety of superior quality linear, task, and accent LED lighting solutions for both residential and commercial applications.

Rocky Mount is to be lit with brighter light soon, reported Rocky Mount Telegram. The recent meeting held by Rocky Mount City Council touched on full switch to LED streetlights, said Rich Worsinger, director of energy resources. The total cost of the conversion is approximately US $ 3 million, which will be full funded by the city’s electric fund, said Worsinger. The city plans to pay for the conversion with dent financing, said City Manager Charles Penny. 

Japanese display manufacturer The Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) developed a 4.38-inch hybrid display that combines OLED and LCD technologies together to create high contrast and color quality indoors, according to a Nikkei Technology and EE Times report.

Researchers at Osaka University developed a technology to control the light wavefront reflected from a cholesteric liquid crystal - a liquid crystal phase with a helical structure. Although known for their ability to Bragg-reflect light, cholesteric liquid crystals could only be used as flat mirrors, reflecting light at the same angle as the incident angle. The new technology enables planar optical components to be made with functionality by design, contributing to the miniaturization of catoptrics devices.

Nichia is very focused on new patent suits, and filed not one but four new suits. The patent suits, include those involving U.S. LED bulb distributors Feit Electric, Meridian, Lowe’s and L G Supplier (not LG Supplier). These three suits are centered around the 250 patent, which involves resin and LED chip leadframe structures. The last suit targeting B&Q self-branded LED bulbs mostly has to do with YAG patents, and unlike the first three is clamping down on home improvement company’s branded bulbs.

The following is a notification from UL that the LED A21 lamp identified below and manufactured prior to August 23, 2015 bears an unauthorized UL Mark for the United States and Canada and may pose a shock hazard. The LED lamp does not comply with UL safety requirements and is not authorized to bear the UL Mark for the United States or Canada.

On May 27, 2016, Nichia Corporation ("Nichia") filed a patent infringement lawsuit against B & Q PLC (“B&Q”), a UK-based DIY company, in the London High Court (Patents Court).

Havells India (the company) has scaled up its share in Promptec to 51%, which values INR 65 million (US $970,000), according to The Dollar Business.

LED car module manufacturer Lastertech announced its consolidated revenue in May 2016 soared 59.76% month-on-month (MOM), or 71.36% year-on-year (YoY) to NT $ 353 million (US $10.90 million), reported UDN.

Philips Lighting, announced a new contract with French premium tomato grower, Le Jardin de Rabelais. In conjunction with horticulture partner, Certhon, Philips Lighting will supply LED horticultural lighting and services to the French grower to help it to increase the yield and taste of its speciality tomato crop for supermarkets in France.

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced the competitive selection of nine solid-state lighting (SSL) projects to receive funding, in response to the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0001364 (“Solid-State Lighting Advanced Technology R&D – 2016”). These 18- to 24-month projects will focus on the following existing DOE SSL R&D program areas:

Plessey announced today the appointment of Maarten Klein as Head Agronomist to provide specialist expertise for Plessey's horticultural lighting solutions. Maarten brings specialist expertise in the use of LED lighting for growing commercial crops, developed whilst he was the Research Director at Delphy in Wageningen, Holland.

Our research team has released their latest LED package market demand report for May 2016, micro-LEDs displayed by ITRI at Computex 2016. DOE has unveiled its 2016 SSL R&D plan, which highlights LED and OLED technology developments.

DOE has published the 2016 edition of the Solid-State Lighting R&D Plan. It was developed in conjunction with community experts through input received at roundtable meetings held in September and October 2015 and at the DOE SSL R&D Workshop held in February 2016 in Raleigh, NC. The discussions covered R&D needs for LED and OLED technologies, ranging from core technology research and product development through manufacturing R&D.

This article contributed by a Wellmax editor analyses implications from the recent shutdown of Philips LED factory in Shenzhen, China. For Guangdong province alone, over 20 companies were listed. Kingsun Optoelectronic, Honglitronic entered into capital market, and the total market capitalization was over RMB 20 billion. The aggregate investment for provincial LED industry bases in Huizhou, Dongguan, Jiangmen, Nanhai, Zencheng and etc. was over 50 billion Chinese yuan.

Hopkinton, a town in Connecticut, U.S. discussed last week at a workshop enacting zoning ordinances to regulate commercial LED signs and solar energy projects, reported The Westerly Sun.

Elemental LED, a leading U.S. based engineering and technology company that manufactures LED lighting solutions announced today a partnership with Legacy Lighting that extends its Diode LED product brand into Austin, TX and the surrounding area. Elemental LED and its wholesale and manufacturing division, Diode LED, provides a wide variety of superior quality linear, task, and accent LED lighting solutions for both residential and commercial applications.

The Pakistan government has announced it will be including LED lights in its fiscal year 2016-2017 budget, the emerging market is expected to present high growth rates of CAGR 45% till 2020, but the source of the projections remains unclear.

Philips Lighting, a global leader in lighting, welcomed a group of 28 European Union (EU) Agriculture Ministers including EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Phil Hogan to the Philips Lighting GrowWise Center in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The Center leads horticultural and vertical farming research where growth recipes are developed for food crops. The visit was part of the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Agriculture organized by the Dutch EU Presidency. The central theme of this two day visit to the Netherlands was 'Food of the future - the future of food'.

This article that covers the global companies and governments pledge to deploy 6 billion LED bulbs is written by Arianna Tozzi from The Climate Group.

Notice to readers that Hot Picks of the Week will be released one day later this week.

Taiwanese LED chip manufacturer Arima Optoelectronics Corporation (AOC) has released a statement on Thursday stating it is assessing whether Chinese competitor San’an Opto’s AlGaInP LED products had infringed its wafer bonding technology patents.

Leyard announced on June 2 that the company’s whole subsidy has participated in the investment of PV ML LLC, the investment entity that signed the stake transfer agreement with Legend Pictures for the acquisition of Magic Leap’s stake.

A UBS analyst projected Applied Materials is capable of sourcing 100 million Apple iPhone screen, as the Cupertino based company pushes for OLED devices.

Xiaomi’s unveiled its latest wearable device Xiaomi Mi Band 2 that will be released in China on June 7, 2016, reported Engadget.

Networked LED light fixtures with built-in sensors can create a digital nervous system for cities. If deployed on streets, in parking garages and in buildings, this ubiquitous infrastructure  will create a constant stream of useful data for government, business and citizens.

Caribbean LED Lighting (St Lucia) (CLL), the only regional LED manufacturer in the region launched their Bois D’Orange showroom and retail store recently. The sister company is based in Barbados, and manufactures all types of residential, commercial, landscape and streetlights and has established an ambitious growth strategy.