Japanese LED manufacturer Nichia has shown no signs of making peace with Taiwan LED manfuacturer Everlight over the latest patent dispute. In a rare move, Nichia held a press conference in Taiwan to clarify the situation and criticized Everlight’s former response towards the case. Nichia’s General Manager of Legal Affairs and Intellectual Properties, Katsuyuki Akutagawa, who arrived in Taipei on Sept. 13 pointed out, Everlight had been spreading biased information regarding the patent dispute over the past year, which has misdirected Nichia clients and high ranking client officials to believe the company’s patents were worthless. Akutagawa appearance in Taipei shows Nichia has abandoned its more conservative approach from the past to a more aggressive stance. 

The ongoing patent lawsuit between Taiwanese LED packaging manufacturer Everlight and Japanese LED manufacturer Nichia heats up. The two companies have filed lawsuits in Japan, Taiwan, Germany, the U.S. and China. General Manager of Legal Affairs and Intellectual Properties at Nichia, Katsuyuki Akutagawa attended a press conference in Taiwan on September 13th. He stated that Nichia will no longer be passive during this dispute but fight back against Everlight’s patent infringement.

The maturing of the LED lighting application market has not only seen LED manufacturers aggressively increasing LED luminosity, but also gradually placing more and more attention on the importance in color rendering performance for LED products. Mitsubishi has stated that in the past most sapphire wafers included yellow phosphor in order to create white light, but that the color rendering performance was lack luster. With the evolution of phosphor technology, sapphire wafers to create white light can now also contain green and red phosphor and the same effect happens when UV wafers are paired with red, blue, and green phosphor. This has a clear improvement on color rendering.

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled in favor of Everlight today (September 13th) over patent infringement lawsuits filed against Nichia Corp regarding U.S. patent no. 6,653,215 LED metallization technology. Everlight also demands the courts declare Nichia patent nos. 5,998,925 and 7,531,960 void.

Hammerhead Navigation, a U.S. company has started a fundraising campaign on Dragon Innovation for its LED bike navigation system that can be programmed with a smartphone. The navigation system, Hammerhead, makes cycling safer as it saves cyclists the trouble of checking their smartphones for locations and routes while on the road. The bright RGB LEDs signal different information according to its array on the device. 

Solomon Systech Limited today announced that it has successfully developed China’s 1st qHD AMOLED display driver IC with Visionox. Solomon Systech is a leading international semiconductor company providing display IC products and system solutions.  It is also the global market leader of PMOLED.  Visionox is a leading display panel manufacturer focusing on the development of OLED technology and products.

NEC Display Solutions of America, a provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, announced today its new 21.5-inch AccuSync™ AS222WM desktop monitor targeted to small-to-medium-sized business users.

Human centric lighting is intended to promote a person’s well-being, mood and health. It can improve concentration, safety and efficiency in workplaces or educational environments. It can support healing processes and prevention of chronic diseases among persons with irregular daily routines or in elder care. For the first time, a joint study by LightingEurope, the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI), and the global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney shows that human centric lighting can become a multi-billion-euro business, covering around 7% of the general lighting market in Europe. 

Ideal for the hospitality industry, OSRAM SYLVANIA is offering a full portfolio of SYLVANIA ULTRA 25™ LED lamps that offer energy and cost savings and the inviting 2500K color temperature that creates a warm, relaxing atmosphere for customers.

Taiwan LED wafer manufacturer Epistar announced more good news for its market layout in LED lighting. According to a report by global financial service firm Morgan and Stanley, Epistar’s infiltration into CREE’s supply chain, controlling production of high efficiency red LED chips and mid-to-low watt sapphire wafer orders, lighting proportion within the company will continue to rise for 4Q.

In late August, LEDinside introduced a portable LED light cube for filmmakers and photographers from Australian online solutions company 1C12. The company’s flexible fund raising project with a target of US$ 60,000 launched on Indiegogo just a month ago has seen funds flow in at an exponential rate to US$ 119,302. Having nearly doubled its estimated funding requirements, the Australian company has announced the addition of an adaptor range in a recent update on Indiegogo.

Freudenberg displays a variety of energy-saving solutions for vehicle applications, including a  flexible printed circuit board technology to incorporate 64 tiny LED lights for the new Opel Adam headline. it took Freudenberg 18 months to develop the LED solution, a first according to the company to use a customized flexbile printed circuit board technology.

Quantum Materials Corp. announced it has shipped Tetrapod Quantum Dots in sample quantities to a diversified leading Asian-based electronics manufacturer. Quantum Materials recently developed tetrapod quantum dots to meet the client's performance specifications.

The newest addition to the Apple family, the iPhone 5S/5C will be launched later this month. The addition of fingerprint recognition technology incorporating sapphire crystal has greatly benefitted substrate manufacturers. Crystal Applied Technology hit record highs with their August revenue at NT$194 million (US$6.5 million) with a monthly growth of 26.79 percent. Crystalwise Technology revenue for August was NT$170 million, an increase of 3.6 percent.

Future Lighting Solutions LED department announced completing renovations of National Wet Land Museum of China’s night lights in a joint project with Yajiang Applied Technology (YAT).When the museum was established in 2010 it came with night lights, but the design did not include its landmark tourist tower. The new LED design uses energy saving “green” lighting systems produces purer colors with warmer color temperature and more distinctive night view effects from a distance. The design used in total 144 LED linear wall washer lamps, and 36 1W LED bulbs were installed at an interval of one meter.

Dialight, a global LED manufacturer that specializes in transportation, infrastructure, industrial, and hazardous areas, announced a new line of Vigilant® aircraft obstruction LED lighting that offers a number of advancements on their already superior obstruction product line. With FAA certification for all tower and aircraft obstruction heights, the new Vigilant obstruction lighting line provides lower power consumption, smaller size, less wind load and lighter weight.

The bar has been raised with the latest Cree, Inc. innovation – the Cree® TW (TrueWhite®) Series LED Bulb. The revolutionary bulb emits natural LED light – setting a new standard with a Color Rendering Index (CRI) of 93. Cree is the first company to meet the California Energy Commission (CEC) LED bulb specification. The new TW Series bulb looks like a light bulb, lights like a light bulb and gives consumers another reason to switch to LED. The new Cree bulb is available for US$ 19.97 for the 60-watt replacement.

Seoul Semiconductor, a global LED manufacturer, has announced that Acrich2 LED modules powered by AC are now achieving luminous efficacies of 140lm/W, nearly a 20% upgrade from previous versions. The technology has been incorporated into lighting fixtures already being sold in major North American lighting retailers and has become the world’s best luminance efficacy AC LED module in the global solid state lighting market.

China has a huge market demand for conventional lighting. The country’s market for incandescent light and CFL in 2012 reached 1.18 billion lamps and 1.27 billion respectively. Fluorescent tube light market demands reached 830 million, while circular fluorescent lamp market demand was at 800 million. In addition, the nation’s halogen lamp market demand was at 755 million. If all these lights are replaced with LED luminaire products, it would be a massive market. Cree CEO Charles Swobodo once made a statement that the company’s goal is to replace every single incandescent light bulb.

According to predictions by the Japanese Machinery Federation, by 2030 LED/OLED lighting will reach a penetration rate of 30 percent in the Japanese indoor lighting market, making up 20 percent of energy consumption.

The joint investment between San’an Optoelectronics and Yankon Lighting was announced on September 9th that the two companies will establish a development company for new illuminant and lighting R&D.  The joint venture between the two companies make use of the combined technology and market superiority to create a market pipe line for development of new LED illuminant and lighting products.

In response to Nichia Corporation’s press release on September 9th, 2013 regarding the German patent infringement litigation concerning patent No. EP936682 (DE69702929) against Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. (Everlight), Everlight strongly believes that the DE69702929 patent is invalid and had filed an invalidity action at the German Federal Patent Court in March 2012. The German Federal Patent Court will give its judgment in February 2014. Furthermore, the ruling of the Düsseldorf District Court at the first instance is not the conclusive judgment. Everlight is evaluating the possibility of filing for an appeal. 

On September 3, 2013, in the patent infringement lawsuits in Germany at the Düsseldorf District Court which Nichia Corporation (“Nichia”) filed against Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. (Taiwan) and Everlight Electronics Europe GmbH (“Everlight”, docket number 4a O 56/12), as well as their German distributors Future Electronics Deutschland GmbH (docket number 4a O 59/12) and REGO Lighting GmbH (docket number 4a O 108/12), the court found with judgments of the same day that Everlight and said distributors infringe Nichia’s patent YAG patent concerning the accused white LED products.

Larson Electronics has announced the addition of the EPL-16BS-1X150LED-100 Explosion Proof LED Light to its comprehensive line of explosion proof lighting equipment. Featuring a powerful 150 watt LED lamp assembly and simple four leg aluminum base stand, this light can illuminate 8,000 square feet of work area with 10,000 lumens of light output.

Commercial uses for ultraviolet (UV) light are growing, and now a new kind of LED under development at The Ohio State University could lead to more portable and low-cost uses of the technology.

NASA headquarters, a leased facility in Washington, D.C., has been outfitted with energy-saving CR Series LED Troffers by Cree, Inc. The high-performance LED installation is part of a renovation to maximize energy savings of the 600,000 square-foot building. More than 1,300 Cree CR22™ architectural LED troffers have been installed, and the new fixtures are expected to deliver energy savings of 52 percent over the previously installed T8 fluorescent fixtures. An additional 5,200 Cree® CR22 troffers are planned to complete the lighting upgrade.

Taiwan wafer manufacturer Epistar consolidated revenue for August 2013 is NT$1.97 billion with a 2.85 increase month-on-month, .39 percent higher than August 2012. Epistar president Li Bingjie pointed out that although lighting demands for 3Q are continuing to move higher, they have felt affects from decrease in TV backlighting demand. 3Q revenue is predicted to be either level with or less than 2Q and Citibank estimates that Epistar 3Q revenue will decrease 5 percent.

Strong LED backlight and lighting product performances pushed Taiwan LED package manufacturer revenue for Aug. 2013 up 10.13% to NT$ 2.41 billion (US$ 8 million) compared to NT$ 2.19 billion in July. The company announced Monday its financial results for Aug. 2013, which showed record high growths, as revenues grew at an Year-on-Year (YOY) rate of 33.96% compared to the same period last year. Everlight’s order visibility is 1.5 months, and its utilization rate was 80-90%. Operations in 2H13 showed minor differences in 3Q and 4Q estimations.

Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s (PolyU) Department of Electronic and Information Engineering has recently developed a high efficiency Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) LED driver that will allow LED lamps to become brighter and more efficient. 

Philips Lighting (China) vice president and general manager Chandra Vaidyanathan in Guangzhou said that “by 2015, LED lighting will make up 45 percent of the global lighting market. This is especially true for China where proportions will be even bigger thanks to strong government promotion.”