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Super Vision Places First OEM Order With Lighting Science Group
December 20, 2006...In its first major business maneuver since ending its patent war with Color Kinetics, Super Vision has reportedly placed its initial original equipment manufacturer order with Lighting Science Group (LSG). The order for LSG’s suite of LED lighting products will be sold under Super Vision’s new SaVi LED brand. According to LSG, product samples from the initial order will give the sales force of Super Vision the opportunity to market and aggressively sell LSG’s LED lights through Super Vision’s markets in the architectural, signage, swimming pool, and retail lighting industries.
Mike Bauer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Super Vision, stated, “SaVi LED is a new comprehensive line of energy efficient, high output, white light LED products the company will be introducing to the commercial lighting market in January. After spending significant time researching other white LED lighting products in the market, we found LSG’s technology and OEM capabilities to be superior to the competition. This initial purchase, and the marketing plan behind our SaVi LED line, will enable our sales team to quickly penetrate the market with one of the broadest platforms of LED light sources & fixtures in this emerging industry.”
LSG is the first company to market with a high-output, dimmable, Edison-based LED bulb. The Company currently has 25 patents and patents pending in the LED lighting space and a product portfolio comprised of 30 different product variations. LSG says the order represents its first OEM partnership. LSG News Release
Nichia Files Infringement Claim Against UK Retailer for Holiday Light Sale
SSLDesign News Staff
December 19, 2006...Nichia filed a patent infringement claim against a UK-based retailer, Argos Limited. According to Nichia, Argos received news of the claim for damages and permanent injunction from future infringement in November 2006. The claim alleges that Argos sells infringing holiday lights. Specifically these include: “120 White Multifunction LED Lights" sold in Autumn Winter 2006 and "144 Multifunction White LED Crab Lights" sold in Autumn/Winter 2005. Nichia believes that the products infringe at least two of its European Patents.
In the past the company has brought patent litigation against holiday light maker, Doshisha. Doshisha settled with the Nichia about six months later. (Ref: Coverage). Nichia has also been known to bring litigation against retailers including Sharper Image who later settled. Despite the company’s recent intellectual property loss in Korea, Nichia apparently continues to pursue alleged infringement. (Ref: Coverage). In the news release related to the Argos infringement, the company asserted as usual that it will pursue patent infringers in any country around the world. In this statement Nichia added that it is beginning a program to enforce its patent rights against infringers throughout Europe. Nichia News Release
New Audi R8 Features Advanced Power TopLEDs from Osram Opto Semiconductors
LIGHTimes Staff
December 19, 2006...Audi’s newest sports car, the R8 will utilize daytime running lamps from Osram Opto Semiconductor. The R8’s headlights feature Osram Opto Semiconductor’s Advanced Power TopLED LEDs which are positioned to emphasize each curve. The daytime running lamps utilize 12 separate LED spotlights per lamp. As with LED use in general, the daytime running lamp the daytime LED-based daytime running lamps reduce power consumption. Additionally, Osram points out that the company has made recent advances in packaging, which improves the device’s lifetime and high temperature operation. LIGHTimes SecondPage members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Color Kinetics Signs Licensing Agreement With Neo-Neon
LIGHTimes Staff
December 18, 2006...Color Kinetics, the color mixing technology pioneer of Boston, Massachusetts USA, reports that it has signed a licensing agreement with China-based Neo-Neon. Under the agreement, Neo-Neon will have access to Color Kinetics’ complete patent portfolio which currently includes 58 issued patents that range from core technology and products, to high-level control systems, complete lighting systems, applications, environments, and methods. According to Color Kinetics (CK), the agreement allows Neo-Neon to develop and sell LED light emitting products using CK technology worldwide.
Neo-Neon is a 25-year-old, manufacturer of decorative, architectural, commercial, and entertainment lighting products, for businesses, industry, and home decor. According to CK, Neo-Neon sells a growing number of LED-based products, and the new licensing agreement will allow it to take advantage of Color Kinetics’ digital intelligence technology related patents. LIGHTimes SecondPage members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
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Thinking Volume or Thinking Differently?
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
December 28, 2006...The early-adoption phase of many technology industries often consists of simply doing a better job of serving existing applications. In rare cases, an industry locks on to the “thinking differently” model fairly early in its adoption-life, and in so doing it can change the world. We believe solid state lighting is one of those world-changers.
As discussed in our last column, a new technology can replace existing applications by moving “niche to niche". As niches expand and volumes rise, it naturally drives the costs down to the point that some kind of “mass adoption” becomes affordable and convenient. In a number of cases, the “economies of mass adoption” for solving existing applications will reveal new applications. PC’s have been mentioned as this kind of “niche to niche” case-in-point, moving from hobbyists to small business owners/users, then onto employees' desks and now into hundreds of millions homes worldwide.
In contrast to the “niche to niche” rise of the PC, radio is a good example of one of those innovations where “thinking differently” took hold very early on. At the time that Mr. Marconi really started showing what radio could do, remote communication consisted of the telegraph for realtime messaging, postal letters for affordable non-realtime communications, and phonographs for "richer" content, such as music or the spoken word. Radio was readily adopted where landlines weren't practical (ship-to-shore communications, for instance) but as quickly as 7 years into its practical life, it also spawned a whole new concept of mass media entertainment; music, news and stories that came to the audience, rather than the audience having to come to them. With that new paradigm in hand, it wasn’t really that big a leap to television, or even the internet and the changes it brought to everyday life.
For the solid state lighting industry, “thinking differently” means shifting our thinking from “how to light it” to “how to put those photons to use”. Mike Holt, CEO of Lumileds, delivered an interesting talk on that concept at the recent LED Leadership Summit. As mentioned before, Cree’s CEO, Chuck Swoboda concentrated his talk this time around on the need for affordability, but we only need look back to CompoundSemi Online’s 2004 “Blue” conference in Taiwan to have recalled hearing Chuck say, “Most of the success of the LED industry will likely come from applications we haven’t even imagined yet”. Obviously, both innovation and affordability are required, but are we looking at a case here where they’ll be equal drivers for the industry?
It looks hopeful… We recently had one of those "what's up?" discussions, this time with Brent York, CTO of lighting module supplier TIR Systems (and a gracious co-chair of this coming year’s Blue 2007 conference, to be held mid-April in Taiwan), he mentioned a somewhat recent shift in TIR’s thinking. In the past, it had been suggested that the luminaire manufacturers might be in for some difficulties to adapt their business models from a $20 fixture containing a $1 bulb up to a $50 or $100 “smart fixture” where 80 percent of the system value has shifted into the “bulb” (meaning the LED subsystem and associated controller functions). Moving from providing 90 percent of the system value-add down to 20 percent tends to really mess up your corporate planning day… The natural question that arises from this is, "Will the luminaire manufacturers survive that value shift, or will the LED module designers simply move up and capture the next step of the value chain?"
A few weeks ago when this editorial was originally conceived , I expected to include a note to lighting companies and designers along the lines of, "If you aren’t sure what solid state/LED lighting can do for you, don’t worry, the solid state lighting innovators will do that part for you… Just listen to what they say, and keep an open mind." Based on what Brent reports, it appears the true story is just the opposite.
It turns out that as TIR continues to roll out its self-described “fully integrated and seamless LED-based light source technology” line of Lexel modules; Brent has found that the lighting designers are actually introducing him to an incredible variety of new approaches and applications that quite simply weren’t possible using the previously available technologies. "Beyond the distribution channels and customer relationships, we continue to be blown away by the design aspects of what these guys want to put together. Now that we’ve realized this, we’re not considering any move up to the fixtures and have instead changed our strategy to concentrate on capturing added value within the supply chain."
Oops… Could reality be more along the lines of a note to solid state lighting device and module designers? Perhaps we should instead say, "Don’t worry, just keep going after the niches to build the volumes. Meanwhile, make it easy on the lighting designers, and they’ll simply tell you what those new applications are going to be." We’ll all enjoy watching what the lighting industry is coming up with over this next year.
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