Looking at the Patent Warfare at Home and Abroad from Cree and Xuming's Extinguishment

It is understood that Cree and SemiLEDs have agreed to end their patent infringement lawsuits for more than one year. SemiLEDs agreed to implement a ban that will take effect on October 1, 2012, prohibiting the import and sale of SemiLEDs in the United States. The product accused by the defendant and made a one-time payment to Cree for damage caused in the past. The remaining claims of both parties are repealed without harming the rights of future rights protection, and other terms will not be disclosed.

The patent warfare between Cree and Xuming Optoelectronics continued for more than a year. Their reconciliation will become one of the landmark events in the history of LED patents at home and abroad. It also reflects that the solution to the current patent dispute is not necessarily a fight. "You are dead and alive," and in the face of market interests, adopting a "win-win strategy" may be the best policy. Next, OFweek semiconductor lighting network editors will use this example as a guide to discuss with the readers the origin and status of patent warfare at home and abroad.

First, let's review the background of what happened:

April 13, 2011, LED manufacturer CREE, INC., North Carolina, USA. (hereinafter abbreviated as CREE) filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Taiwan LED chip manufacturer SEMILEDS OPTOELECTRONICS in the Federal District Court in Central Carolina of North Carolina for alleged patent infringement, claiming that the company produced and sold MvpLED. (Metal Vertical Photon Light Emitting. Diode, vertical current-excitation light-emitting diode (LED) substrate) has infringed CREE's LED patent. There are 6 patents in this case, which were transferred to CREE after the inventor obtained the patent right. The content is related to the structure and manufacturing method of the LED.

On August 15, 2011, Xuming Electric hit back to Cree and filed a report to Delaware court on the grounds of four patent infringements. The four items in this case are the patents USD566056; US7,615,789; US7,646,033; USD580888, related to LED chip design patents and white LED production methods.

Eventually, the incident ended with a settlement between the two parties.

More and more facts have shown that patents have become a kind of war weapon behind the scenes among enterprises in various industries, and they are also the core content of competition among enterprises and the sharpest weapon for attacking opponents. According to the past, most of the companies that are facing the court because of patent cases are large-scale enterprises (especially those with large international companies) and small and medium-sized enterprises. In terms of the domestic LED industry, Chinese LED companies are at risk of patent infringement at any time because core patents are controlled by overseas manufacturers.

Regardless of LED chips and packaging, in the field of LED lighting, compared with foreign lighting companies, many Chinese lighting companies have not integrated patent protection into their corporate development strategies.

In Taiwan, although in the early 1980s, early enterprises, especially some electronics and high-tech companies, did not have a special concept in terms of patents, after a decade of experience and experience, the Taiwanese companies gradually became aware of patents. importance. Compared with Taiwanese companies, mainland LED companies are currently lagging behind in terms of patent awareness. “One industry source said that this is mainly because the mainland LED industry is just beginning to encounter patent issues.

“Enterprises are more likely to be seen from the sidelines and think that the patent war will not be on their own. Early on if the products are sold domestically, they may not touch the issue of patents. However, as long as the products are sold to Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea, It will be discovered that the patent has become a crucial issue. The company has been accused, or his client has been accused, that the client receives a warning letter and the client will reverse request the domestic manufacturer to explain and solve the problem.”

As a whole, Chinese enterprises and foreign companies still have a certain gap in product competitiveness. The problems include: The ability of independent innovation of enterprises is not strong, many patents are minor repairs and minor changes on patents applied by foreign giants, facing international patent litigation. They are often passively beaten; Chinese companies' patents seldom involve the core technology of LED lighting, and often there are more applications for appearance patents, so the development has been hampered everywhere; the applied value of the patents is not high, while foreign giants The applied patents are often applied in a very wide range and have a far-reaching impact.

Dr. Liang Bingwen from the Suzhou Nanotechnology Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences pointed out that the more listed companies in the Mainland, the more objects that can be represented by the international giants, and the huge demand potential in the Mainland. In the near future, they will become the major competitors for LED companies. On the battlefield, patent wars are on the horizon.

LED Lighting Consultant Dong Pingnian of Foshan Lighting also once said such words: “In the initial stage of the company, the large-scale patented company deliberately pretended to ignore it and adopted the 'fishing and fish farming' strategy. The fat fertilizer went back and stabbed a knife and reported the new company. Go to court.” He pointed out that Chinese LED manufacturers do not have patents, which means that they have no defense tools and are in a position of passive beating in patent disputes. Therefore, the battle of patents has caused many developing small and medium-sized enterprises to be frightened and afraid of being involved in this abyss.

However, judging from the situation in recent years, the dispute over patents has not only appeared between big companies and small and medium-sized enterprises. As the market's competitive pattern has become more and more clear, the original international monopoly that has already monopolized the global LED patent market , also began to start large enterprises. Such as Japan's Nichia, ToyodaGosei, American Cree, Philips Lumileds and Osram, they have initiated or responded to patent litigation in recent years.

The dispute between Japan and Yeguang On April 20th, 2012, Everlight Electronics filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nichia Corp in the District Court of Michigan, USA, and appealed to the court to prohibit Nissan from manufacturing, using and selling in the United States. , Inviting for sale or importing infringing products, and requesting damages. The patent involved in this case is U.S. Patent No. 6,653,215, which is related to the LED metallization process technology.

Japan's Big LED manufacturer Nichia Chemical issued a press release on its website on May 8, claiming that it had indicted the German LED lighting company Zenaro Lighting GmbH and the German sales company REGO-Lighting GmbH infringement on March 27th to the German Dussevoev District Court. . The product that Nissan accuses is an office lighting product using Zenaro's white LED fluorescent lamp (Product Model: SL-Cobra/T5 048DC/C/P10/LF/D50/ZN) (Product Model: OL-Deluxe/QL2 /P44/LF/D50/SR/M/CE/ZN), Nissan argues that the white LED fluorescent lamp and the office lighting product using the fluorescent lamp infringe the YAG patent EP 936 682 held by Nissan. (DE 697 02 929).

Fairchild launched a new wave of U.S. patent infringement litigation against PI on the jury of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delware, which ruled that Power Integrations (PI) infringed upon Fairchild Semiconductor. Several days after the U.S. patent rights of primary side regulation technology, Fairchild announced that it had launched a new wave of U.S. patent infringement litigation against Power Integrations on May 1st (U.S. time).

Samsung’s LED lighting patent lawsuit won the first lawsuit against Osram’s Samsung and Osram’s patent lawsuit on LED lighting technology. Samsung won the first case. The Patent Judgment Committee under the Korea Patent Office stated on the 22nd that Samsung Electronics had requested to declare OSRAM's two Korean patents invalid in March 2011 and had made a ruling on “Oslang Patent Invalid” in the case. The decision of the Patent Judicial Committee is equivalent to the first-instance judgment. If OSRAM does not accept it, it may appeal to the patent courts and the big courts responsible for the second and third trials in turn.

And in April 2012 LG Innotek also won a patent lawsuit with Osram. At present, Korean companies are making lawsuits against OSRAM in South Korea, the United States, Germany, and China. The success of the lawsuit in South Korea has a resounding effect.

From this many cases, we can see that the patent dispute has become a battlefield that all LED companies cannot escape and continues to develop until these international companies that have formed monopolies “collect” other companies and take over directly. After the market foundation of the latter, the possibility of starting a patent warfare between big companies also exists. However, this is a later story. Here, the author does not discuss it first.

In light of the dispute over LED patents, the industry’s call to encourage companies to respond positively has existed for a long time. Some time ago, Guangdong Provincial Lighting Association President Quan Jian put forward the idea of ​​establishing a “patent pool.” He suggested that related companies should hold up to form a patent pool.

Establishing a patent pool It is understood that “patent pool” is a joint license, which is a patent license trading platform composed of patent rights holders. Patent owners can use this platform to carry out horizontal licensing, or open to third parties under a unified licensing condition. With vertical permission, the rate is determined by the patentee.

The patent pool is essentially a market-based trading mechanism and a mode of centralized management of patents. The original intention of establishing a "patent pool" is to accelerate patent licensing and promote the application of technology. In the long run, it is necessary to strengthen patent analysis, establish patent pools to achieve a reasonable layout of patents, and jointly deal with external risks. LED technology and its industry is one of the important contents of the current high-tech development, and it is also a fiercely competitive industry. Judging from the development of the LED industry in recent years, more and more companies in the country have begun to use patent alliances to protect intellectual property, reduce the cost of acquiring intellectual property, and increase their competitive advantage.

The establishment of an LED patent pool is crucial to the development of China's LED lighting patents. Through the establishment of a patent alliance to strengthen patent strategy research, pay close attention to the direction of industrial technology development, patent strategy and technology, economic development and market competition are closely linked, is an important part of the company's business development strategy. Patent protection, patent analysis, and establishment of a patent pool, on the one hand, achieve the purpose of rational distribution of patents and defense against infringement; on the other hand, the establishment of the alliance, as the beginning of the strategic integration of LED industry resources in the region, the domestic LED industry may break through the bottleneck Into the fast lane of development, to accelerate the development of the LED industry, to obtain a number of products of autonomous knowledge-producing areas, to deal with the international LED giant's "encirclement and suppression". Encouraging the establishment of patent alliances among LED companies can not only serve as a demonstration for other industries or enterprises, but also can promote common strategic interests among enterprises in the entire LED industry. From tactical competition characterized by individual patents to patent portfolios. As a feature of strategic competition, an industrial chain, an innovation chain, and a product chain are formed to realize the preferential use of the enterprises within the alliance and the joint licensing of patent technologies with each other, to improve the overall development advantages of the industry and bring more economic and social benefits to the company.

As the vice president of Shenzhen LED Industry Federation, Rui Shirong, said that after the founding of the patent union, on the one hand, the licensing price of core patents can be reduced, and on the other hand, even through the replacement of one core patent by multiple application patents, the whole enterprise can be reduced. the cost of. ‖

Play a "patent survival battle"

In addition, there are many professionals who feel that companies themselves must earnestly fight for the "patent survival battle," which requires companies to do the following two things.

First, companies must pay attention to research and development. As a new lighting product, LED lighting product quality determines whether the market can be healthy and sustainable development, determines the consumer's evaluation and impression of LED products, determines whether the terminal market can really open. The importance of quality is self-evident, and R&D is the fundamental strategy for companies to ensure product quality from autonomous knowledge products. In addition, in the face of the homogenization phenomenon that cannot be extinguished on the market, enterprises can only fundamentally guarantee the ownership of patented products and are the most reliable market competition capital.

Second, patent cooperation, sharing and win-win. At present, the phenomenon of patent authorization between LED companies has become commonplace, especially when the international LED giants build patent barriers between them, and they severely stare at Chinese companies. Once in the middle, the war is imminent. Once faced with lawsuits, companies should not immediately disarm and surrender, but should actively seek solutions. They can choose to cooperate with international big companies, and they can actively apply for independent patents. For example, Zhongming Semiconductor, which had fired the first shot of the patent protection battle, reached a patent cooperation agreement with OSRAM after the patent dispute. In addition, Zhongming and Philips also signed a patented technology cooperation agreement for LED lighting. The patented product is worthy of many companies in the industry to follow suit.

In short, in the face of attractive market opportunities, companies should pay more attention to LED patent issues and actively respond to it. Only when the production and operation of products is legal, can companies survive and develop in the industry for a long time.

LED patent basic knowledge popularization 1, LED technology ecosystem In order to better understand the patented LED technology, we first look at the LED technology ecosystem, usually the LED industry can be divided into four different regions.

The first area is the LED device itself, including manufacturing wafers, LED chips, LED packages, and the like. This part is the cornerstone of the entire LED industry, and therefore the competition is fierce. This area includes almost all top LED manufacturers such as Cree, Nichia, Osram, Philips, Toyoda Gosei, Seoul Semiconductor, etc. Wait.

The second area is peripheral materials and components such as phosphors, packaging materials, drivers, controllers, and thermal management components. (Companies in this region include companies in the first region, but also other companies that provide only peripheral materials and components).

The third area is a company that provides only equipment and tools, mainly wafers, chip manufacturing equipment, and test and measurement equipment. (These companies often only involve the LED industry.)

The fourth area is system integration companies such as LCD TVs, mobile phones, laptops, traffic lights, lamps, retrofit bulbs, automotive lamp components, sensors, communications systems, and medical equipment. Leading companies in this segment include General Electric, Siemens, Philips and Honeywell. (In addition, some LCD TV manufacturers, such as Taiwan’s Chi Mei and AU Optronics, have also joined the first region in recent years and have become LED device manufacturers).

2, the origin of the LED 1) red LED by the General Electric (GE) company Nick Nick. Nick Holonyak was developed in 1962 and he himself was also known as the father of light-emitting diodes;

2) High-brightness blue LED Nichimura's Nakamura is the inventor of the high-brightness blue LED. The blue LED uses an indium gallium nitride material based on a sapphire substrate and was put into production in 1993;

3) White LEDs The emergence of blue LEDs quickly led to the birth of white LEDs that use a special phosphor coating to mix the yellow and blue light produced to produce white light.

3. World LED patent overview Intellectual property (IP) plays an important role in innovation and competition in the LED industry. Many countries, regions and companies encourage patents in major markets to protect their LED-related intellectual property rights.

1) National distribution: In the five years from 2005 to 2010, there are 6,714 patents related to LED technology in the world, and 2,422 patents in the United States lead, followed by 1,090 in Japan, 972 in Taiwan, and 700 in South Korea. 279 in Germany, 114 in China, 65 in the Netherlands, 61 in Canada, 51 in France and 47 in the United Kingdom;

2) Time distribution: During the 10 years from 2000 to 2010, the number of patents issued each year is increasing. For example, in the United States, the specific numbers are: 505, 610, 636, 803, 875, 896, 1237, 1277, 1362, 1496, and 1342. (In the future, the trend of patent applications is still upward, which means that there will be more innovation in the LED industry);

3) Excellent corporate distribution: Samsung ranked first with 536 U.S. patents, followed by Philips 286, Eastman Kodak 209, Nichia 152, OSRAM 140, Xerox 117 items, 115 items of Epistar, 112 items of International Business Machines (IBM), 110 items of Kerry, 92 items of Rohm, 92 items of Hon Hai, 78 items of Toyota synthesis , 57 of Oki, 53 of General Electric, 45 of Lite on, and 32 of Seoul Semiconductor;

4) Patent distribution: The core patented technologies include: substrate materials, large mismatched epitaxial low-temperature buffer layers, doping and annealing activation technologies for P-type GaN, high-quality InGaN material growth and control technologies, and P-type GaN/Al GaN Superlattice technology to improve hole concentration, GaN-based LED transparent electrode technology. (The above patents are breakthrough technologies for high-brightness GaN-based LEDs, which are also impossible to bypass for material growth and device fabrication.)

4, LED patent disputes 1) LED patent disputes from upstream to downstream LED early patent disputes, mainly in the blue epitaxial wafers, chips and white LED, but now concentrated in LED applications. Now, with the continuous expansion of the application market size and application areas, patent incidents surrounding lighting application systems are gradually increasing.

For example, in the early days of LED development, Japan Nichia relied on its absolute advantages in these areas and maintained its monopoly position in the LED industry through a large number of patent infringement complaints. But now, patent disputes in the manufacture of LED lighting systems have become mainstream. For example, Color Kinetics won the patent litigation with Super Vision International, and Osram and Avago announced the licensing of patent interactions.

2) Patent Cooperation Becomes a Mainstream of Development Example 1 : Attitude Changes after Failure of Patent Litigation With a total of 74 basic patents acquired between 1991 and 2001, Japan and Asia have covered the entire manufacturing process of LED structures, epitaxy, chips, and packaging, phosphors, etc. Related raw materials have an absolute monopoly in the LED field. Nichia also relied on the construction of patent barriers and patent litigation to prevent other manufacturers from entering the market to compete with them in order to obtain high exclusive market interest. However, as Osram, Toyoda Gosei, Cree, Lumileds and other companies have increased the number of patents in the LED field, Nichia suffered a setback in patent litigation since 2001, which forced it to change its patent licensing attitude. Respectively with the above companies reached a patent settlement and authorization agreement.

Example 2: Face the big explosion of LED technology, give up the idea of ​​independent development In the year 2002, Nichia Chemical also hoped to rely on its own technology to develop white LEDs, but now in order to further develop the white LED market, it turned to multilateral technology cooperation. In order to improve the speed of technology and product development.

3) The role of industry alliances highlights 5. Currently, there are seven companies that can solve patent problems. 1) CREE: has global patents, cross-licensing with Nichia and TG, and has licensed wafers for red, green and blue sunlight;

2) Nichia: There are global patents and cross-licensing with Toyota, CREE, and Lumileds;

3) Lumileds: cross-licensing with Nichia;

4) Osram: Cross authorization with Nichia;

5) Toyoda: Cross-licensing with Nichia;

6) Bridgelux: There is a global patent that has licensed wafers for red, green and blue sunlight;

7) Epistar: Most countries in the world can solve patent issues;

6. Currently, there are five major manufacturers monopolizing LED patents. Their distribution is: Japan's Nichia, ToyodaGosei, US Cree, Philips Lumileds, and Osram. These five companies applied for a number of patents in order to maintain their competitive advantage and maintain their market share, covering almost the entire industrial chain including raw materials, equipment, packaging, and applications, and conducting research and production through patent authorization and cross-licensing. In doing so, they not only hinder the entry of new competitors, but also increase their own production costs.

As core patents are controlled by overseas companies, Chinese companies are at risk of patent infringement at any time. This is because more than 60% of China's LED companies' products are sold in overseas markets such as Europe and the United States, so many Chinese companies have encountered patent litigation overseas, and most have settled with compensation.