After a long-term continuous R & D investment and years of "cultivation" in the patent layout, Nichia has mastered the basic patents for key technologies such as blue LEDs and white LEDs, and gradually carried out patent layouts throughout the industry chain to launch competitors frequently. Patent infringement litigation to maintain its own dominant position in the LED market. After losing the "patent war" with LED giants such as Cree and Toyota Synthetic, Nichia has successively reached settlements with other giants and turned its "muzzle" towards the new challenger of the LED industry. Is particularly prominent. While strengthening independent R & D, Chinese LED enterprises should pay attention to the patent layout of LED industry giants, flexibly formulate and apply their own patent strategies, and avoid intellectual property rights infringement risks.
In recent years, the production capacity of LED manufacturers in Taiwan has grown rapidly, and the product price is only 1/3 of that of Japanese manufacturers. At the same time, Taiwanese manufacturers in China have an inherent advantage in the mainland market, and all of these pose a potential threat to Japanese manufacturers. In order to prevent Taiwanese manufacturers from sweeping the LED market, Japan and Asia frequently launch patent wars to check and balance future competitors. On the one hand, they directly sue Taiwanese manufacturers, and on the other hand, they sue their distributors and agents, which has the effect of deterring downstream customers. The threat is eliminated at the budding stage. Relatively in the initial stage, Chinese mainland LED companies are dependent on Taiwanese manufacturers' auxiliary vehicles. With the gradual expansion of China's mainland LED companies and the increasing market position, Nichia's patent litigation will surely arrive as scheduled. The following will study and analyze the global patent layout and intellectual property strategy of Nichia, and discuss the patent infringement risks of LED companies in China.
Developing market patents first
As the most valuable intangible asset of the company, Nichia has always attached great importance to the accumulation and layout of intellectual property rights, and has many basic patents in the fields of sapphire substrate epitaxial growth, blue LED, white LED, phosphor and other fields. As of July 2010, Japan and Asia have applied for more than 2,000 patents in the LED field, including 596 US patents, 145 European patents, and 346 Chinese patents. Japan and Asia started patent applications in the LED field as early as the 1980s, and the number of applications has increased rapidly since 2000. At this time, the world's semiconductor lighting policies have been introduced one after another (US 2000, EU 2000, Japan 1998) , South Korea in 2000, China in 2003), it can be seen that the successive formulation of semiconductor lighting plans in major countries / regions has promoted Japan and Asia to accelerate the deployment of LED patents in the world. The patent layout of Japan and Asia is closely related to the development of the global market.
Master the entire industrial chain of basic patent layout
As the world's first blue light LED and a long-term commitment to the development of phosphors, Niya has many basic patents in the fields of sapphire substrate epitaxial growth, blue LEDs, white LEDs, phosphors and other fields. On this basis, Nichia has gradually established a strong patent portfolio in the entire industry chain, and patented technology covers the substrate, epitaxy, chip, packaging, and application fields of the LED industry chain. From the perspective of application volume, Japanese and Asian patent applications are mainly concentrated in the field of packaging and epitaxy, and the proportions of the two have reached 38% and 27%, respectively, followed by the application field, while the number of patent applications in the driving field is the least. The patents in the field of packaging mainly focus on the two technical branches of package and substrate. The patents in the epitaxy field have more applications in the III-V family technology branch, while the technology branches such as the ohmic contact layer and the current spreading layer have fewer applications. Application areas The two technical branches of display screens and backlights have more applications, and other branches also have a considerable number of patent layouts. There are a large number of applications for electrode design and reflective film technology branches in the chip field. 55% of the patents in the substrate field focus on sapphire substrate technology. Nichia has established a relatively complete patent layout in the LED industry chain.
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