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Nichia sues Taiwanese blue LED rival Epistar

After reaching patent settlements with several of its main competitors, Nichia is now taking the fight for its intellectual property rights to Taiwan.
In its latest attempt to defend its intellectual property (IP) rights, Nichia has become involved in legal action against Epistar, a rival blue LED maker based in Taiwan.

This marks the first time that Nichia has tackled one of the many Taiwanese manufacturers of blue LEDs, and was an inevitable step given Nichia’s frequently stated attitude that it would vigorously defend its patent portfolio.

A number of Taiwanese companies are trying to corner the low-cost, high-volume end of the blue LED market in the same way that Taiwan now dominates the AlGaInP LED market. Incidentally, Epistar is also being sued by Lumileds over a patent relating to AlGaInP LEDs.

Nichia is suing Epistar for the infringement of Nichia’s Taiwan patent no.160,722 by Epistar’s blue LED products.

According to a statement from Nichia, the company was granted a preliminary attachment order by a Taiwanese court, which was executed on September 22, 2003. The court order freezes some of Epistar’s bank accounts to preserve funds in the event that damages are awarded to Nichia.

This could be the tip of the iceberg as far as Taiwanese manufacturers are concerned. Nichia’s statement also says that “even though the current legal action is directed at one of Epistar’s products, Nichia intends to take additional necessary legal actions against other Epistar products and/or other products of other companies.”

To protect its IP and its licensing partners’ legal rights, says the statement, Nichia is willing to enforce its intellectual properties against any other infringement in any country in the world.

In 2002, Nichia surprised the nitride LED community by reaching a series of separate IP-related agreements with its main rivals in Japan, Europe and the US. Toyoda Gosei, Cree, Lumileds and Osram Opto Semiconductors all struck deals with Nichia that ended (or in the case of Lumileds, prevented) a series of expensive and time-consuming lawsuits.

These companies all held strong IP positions of their own, so it was in Nichia’s best interests to settle. However, other manufacturers in Taiwan and Korea do not have the patent portfolios necessary to hold their own against Nichia, and it was inevitable that the Japanese company would challenge its rivals.

In July this year, Nichia announced that an unnamed Korean company had agreed to stop producing blue LEDs rather than face legal action from Nichia.

With a large number of companies– Epistar, United Epitaxy Company, Arima, Formosa Epitaxy are among the largest – producing blue LEDs in Taiwan, and other manufacturers in Korea and China, it seems that Nichia’s intellectual property attorneys could be busy for a long time to come.

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