Honeywell targets Lumileds, Cree with LED patent lawsuit

Hi guys,
I just noticed the following info on ledsmagazine.com: http://www.ledsmagazine.com/news/4/10/34

Any one out there haveing any updated information about this and what affects this might have on the K2 and Cree LEDs?

I thought I remember reading that Osram were the first to use this technology. Maybe not.

It's nuisance law suits like this that stand in the way of technological progress. Having said that though, I'm pretty sure that absolutely nothing is going to happen to the current range of Cree and Lumileds LEDs.

monkeyboy said:

I thought I remember reading that Osram were the first to use this technology. Maybe not.

It's nuisance law suits like this that stand in the way of technological progress. Having said that though, I'm pretty sure that absolutely nothing is going to happen to the current range of Cree and Lumileds LEDs.

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How can you be so sure?
My guess is that Honeywell will try to get some royalty fee from Philips and Cree and that this might push up the price a bit or flatten out the price decrease of the LEDs for a while.

Opto-King said:

How can you be so sure?

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I'm guessing that Philips/Cree can afford a better team of lawyers.

monkeyboy said:

...It's nuisance law suits like this that stand in the way of technological progress....

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Not as big as Philips, but with $31B in annual revenue, Honeywell can press pretty hard. I would not call this a nuisance lawsuit. It is the ability to patent new technology that is part of the impetus for many corporations to conduct basic research...

The fact that they've waited until Lumileds' and Cree's products have become well established before filing the lawsuit suggests that they are not interested in developing competing products themselves and are only doing this for the money.

Patent trolls always file out there in Texas. This is a sham and nothing more. This shows how terrible America's patent system is and why laws need to change.

edit: read the actual patent and not the poorly worded article.

Honeywell needs to go back to making thermostats.

brickbat said:

It is the ability to patent new technology that is part of the impetus for many corporations to conduct basic research...

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Shame the US patent system is broken, such that it is worthwhile for some to patent things they shouldn't be allowed to and then make money from the companies doing the real innovation (not saying that is the case here, but I am aware of some US patents which effectively restrict innovation which were issued despite prior art).

I guess some companies like Cree and Phillips/Lumileds know how to design and make products which we can use, and others like Honeywell and Nichia spend most of their time suing other companies. Have you seen Nichia's press release page? Every other news article is about a lawsuit of some kind.

http://www.nichia.co.jp/about_nichia/new.html