Recently, Seoul Semiconductor and Osram came to terms regarding white and visible LED technologies, both agreeing to share their patents (click here to read the full story from LEDs Magazine). While it is nice to see to rival companies, in such a hotly contested and highly competitive arena, come to an agreement to avoid a long, protracted lawsuit, I can’t help but get the feeling in reading this article that neither company likes the other and neither really likes the deal but it was the only way to stop the cash-bleeding and get on with the business of protecting patents..er..I mean making LEDs. What really grabs me from the article is the flow chart showing LED patents and who sued over them, who is currently suing, who has resolved the issue (ie gave up and handed over a mountain of cash), who licensed the technology BEFORE putting it out on the market, and who came to one of these new-fangled cross-licensed patent deal thingies. From this chart you can really see who the big players are in the LED technology field and who the big distributors are, and who just barely matters.
Click here to view flowchart full size
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