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Technology and applications of light emitting diodes

LEDs Magazine

Review

Issue 3

LED S

MAGAZINE

October 2005

Editor: Tim Whitaker editor@leds.iop.org

Tel. +44 (0)117 930 1233 Advertising sales: joanna.hook@iop.org Tel. +44 (0)117 930 1028

VEHICLES

Hella demonstrates white-LED

headlamp technology p7

LIGHTING

LEDs in the mainstream:

technical hurdles and

standardization issues p11

PATENTS

EPO aims to improve patent

classification in LEDs field p14

PATENTS

Small companies fight for a

foothold in white LED sector p15

INTERVIEW

IP issues influence fixture

makers and LED suppliers p18

COLOR CONTROL

Dimming method affects

chromaticity of white LEDs p20

LIGHTING DESIGN

Accurate modeling of LED

colors: scientific approach p21

Hella has demonstrated white-LED headlamp technology suitable for production cars in 2008. p7

DRIVERS

Microcontroller-based LED

drivers: topologies, trade-offs

and limitations p24

CONFERENCES

LED experts converge at Solid

State Lighting conference p29

HIGH-POWER LEDS

Multi-watt LED light engines

offer design opportunities p35

LEDs Magazine is published by IOP Publishing Ltd and Cabot

Media Ltd. Contact address: Institute of Physics Publishing,

Dirac House, Temple Back, Bristol BS1 6BE, UK.

Cyberlux’s RelyOn emergency work light

produces at least 250 lm of white light. p27

Tryka’s Intelligent Drive System was a highlight of

this year’s PLASA show in London. p31

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LED S

NEWS & ANALYSIS

MAGAZINE

PATENTS

Super Vision suffers major

setbacks in patent battle

against Color Kinetics

Super Vision has suffered three straight defeats in the US District Court

for the District of Massachusetts in its patent war against Color Kinetics

(see box opposite) but plans to keep fighting on behalf of the LED

Alliance. The group believes that Color Kinetics has been granted a

series of patents that are substantially based on prior art.

Most recently, the lawsuit filed in March 2004 by Super Vision alleg-

ing that Color Kinetics is infringing US patent no. 4,962,687 was dis-

missed. The patent in question was acquired by Super Vision from

High End Systems and is entitled Variable Color Lighting Systems.

The court determined that Super Vision, rather than being the owner

of the patent, was a non-exclusive licensee, and as such had no right

to enforce the patent. However, the court did not rule out the possi-

bility of a future lawsuit should Super Vision acquire the appropri-

ate rights from the patent owner.

Super Vision says that it will “review the court’s dismissal in depth

and file another suit against Color Kinetics”. It also believes that the

ruling “will have no impact on Super Vision’s ability to prevail on the

merits of its infringement claims”.

Only three weeks previously, the judge issued a summary judg-

ment ruling in favor of Color Kinetics, stating that the company’s

patents in question were valid and that certain Super Vision prod-

ucts infringed on some of those patents. Super Vision stated that it

intends to appeal against this ruling, and is confident that it will have

more success in front of the US Patent Appeals Court in Washington.

In a message to LED Alliance supporters, Brett Kingstone, presi-

dent and CEO of Super Vision, wrote “although there can be no guar-

antee of success, our attorneys are still very confident in our ability

to return this case to a jury trial on the merits, based on significant

errors in prior rulings both in fact and in law”. An appeal (see

www.svision.com/enews/transfer/SVResponseCK0905.pdf) has

already been filed against the first round of summary judgment rul-

ings that went in favor of Color Kinetics.

With Super Vision planning to appeal against the most recent sum-

mary judgment rulings, and also to re-file its infringement case con-

cerning the ’687 patent, there is no end in sight. Kingstone told the

audience at the recent LEDs conference in London (see p11) that “it

could take two more years to resolve everything”.

This provides little comfort to the many LED fixture manufactur-

ers on the sidelines of this dispute. However, some are not standing

still. At September’s PLASA show, Tryka L.E.D. Ltd unveiled its

Intelligent Drive System products. These utilize Pulse Amplitude

Modulation technology, which has been patented around the world,

and represents an alternative to the pulse width modulation (PWM)

technique around which many of the contentious Color Kinetics

patents are based.

European companies remain concerned, even though a group of

them, including Vossloh-Schwabe and Lagotronics, have banded

together to challenge Color Kinetics’ patent applications in Europe.

Third parties can file observations at the application stage or can file

an opposition to the patent up to nine months after the patent is granted.

Extreme irony: a total of 81 ColorBlast 12 units from Color Kinetics

have been used to illuminate the façade of the new regional

European Patent Office building in Munich, Germany. Designed by

New York artist Steven Rand, the installation is programed to scan

through a full spectrum of 16.7 million colors during the course of

one full year, before starting the sequence again.

Three strikes but not out...yet

The US District Court for the District of Massachusetts has ruled in

favor of Color Kinetics on three separate occasions in recent

months. The rulings relate to the following lawsuits:

● March 2002: SV files lawsuit seeking to have certain CK patents

ruled invalid

● June 2002: CK files lawsuit claiming infringement by SV of certain

CK patents

● March 2004: SV files infringement lawsuit against CK over ’687

patent

Strike 1. Color Kinetics’ summary judgment motion granted

(April 2005)

Color Kinetics’ motion was granted for summary judgment regarding

three of Super Vision’s claims relating to interference with prospective

business relationships, trade disparagement and defamation.

Strike 2. Color Kinetics wins summary judgment rulings

(August 2005)

The court ruled that a group of five patents granted to Color

Kinetics are valid, and that various Super Vision products infringe

on some of these patents. SV plans to appeal in the US Patent

Appeals court.

Strike 3. Super Vision patent lawsuit dismissed (September 2005)

Super Vision’s lawsuit against Color Kinetics alleging infringement of

the Variable Color Lighting Systems patent was dismissed. SV

plans to re-file.

Jörn Bielich, managing director of DigitalLicht AG of Freigericht,

Germany, has some fairly typical views. “Clients such as architects

and lighting designers want to choose from a plurality of manufac-

turers with a wide range of products,” he says. “They want to have an

open market with fair competition. If other companies stop develop-

ing new technologies and products [because of pressure from CK]

then the enormous growth of the LED market will slow down.”

Others, such as Jed Dorsheimer, think that the recent rulings in favor

ledsmagazine.com October 2005

LED S

NEWS & ANALYSIS

MAGAZINE

of CK will allow the industry to move forward (see p18). Detlef Eobaldt,

sales and marketing manager of Lagotronics, has a similar view. “Yes,

the CK patents might be obstacles, but so are other patents in other indus-

tries,” he says. “My intention is to move the industry forward without

turning around in circles and leaving the whole thing to the lawyers.”

Competition

Lumileds is the leading manufacturer of high-power (1 W class) LEDs

with its Luxeon product line, although it faces increasing competition

from Cree’s XLamp, Osram Opto’s Golden Dragon, Seoul

Semiconductor’s Z-LED, Cotco’s Dorado and of course high-power

products from Nichia, Toyoda Gosei and other Japanese LED man-

ufacturers.

The deal will bring Philips’ SSL sales more in line with its European

lighting rival Osram (part of Siemens). Osram had sales of

LED SUPPLIERS

Philips takes control of LED

maker Lumileds Lighting

4.2 bil-

lion in 2004, of which 11% (around $570 million) came from its Osram

Opto Semiconductors unit as well as LED sales from other divisions.

However, it is worth noting that only a small proportion of this rev-

enue came from the lighting market.

Another lighting giant, General Electric, has a much smaller SSL

division, GELcore, which is a joint venture with Emcore, a semi-

conductor materials specialist. GELcore had revenues of around

$70 million in calendar year 2004, and was profitable. The company’s

anticipated revenue for 2005 is around $90 million. Most of this rev-

enue comes from traffic lights, channel letters and other signage and

display products.

Once the Philips deal is completed in the fourth quarter of 2005,

both it and Osram will be fully vertically integrated with in-house chip

fabrication, LED packaging, module manufacturing and system inte-

gration. In contrast, both Nichia and Cree are independent companies

that manufacture chips and packaged devices, but don’t have inte-

gration further up the supply chain. Cree’s LED revenue for the fiscal

year ended June 2005 was $322 million, almost all of which was for

unpackaged chips. Nichia, the world’s largest LED manufacturer, had

LED sales of approximately $1.225 billion in 2004. Toyoda Gosei,

another leading LED supplier, which is based in Japan and is part of

the Toyota group, expects to generate total sales from LED products

of $225 million in 2005.

Philips is to acquire the 47% stake owned by Agilent Technologies in

Lumileds Lighting, the high-power LED manufacturer set up as a joint

venture by Philips Lighting and Agilent in 1999. The deal is worth

$950 million (

765 million) to be paid in cash on completion. Philips

will hold 96.5% of Lumileds’ issued and outstanding share capital,

with the remaining 3.5% owned by an employee trust company.

Over the 12 months from August 2004–July 2005, Lumileds’ sales

increased approximately 28% to $324 million and the company had

an operating profit of $83 million. Lumileds’ headquarters is in San

Jose, California, and employs 1,760 people at its offices in San Jose,

Penang, Malaysia and Best, and the Netherlands.

Philips’ in-house capabilities now extend from LED chips to com-

plete solid-state lighting (SSL) modules and systems. By aligning

Lumileds’ LED activities with existing LED lighting modules and

luminaires manufactured by Philips Lighting, as well as the semi-

conductor competencies within Philips Semiconductors, Philips says

that it will be in an “excellent position to strengthen its leadership posi-

tion” in this new technology.

The deal provides Philips with access to over 200 LED-related

patents, and deepens the company’s presence in higher-growth, higher-

margin segments of the lighting industry. Philips is targeting 5%

growth for its lighting business, which has annual sales of around

$5 billion. The contribution from Lumileds, with sales currently around

$320 million, is expected to start making an impact in the longer term.

Philips expects to be producing conventional light bulbs for at least

another 25 years, if not longer, and says that many of the early appli-

cations for LEDs in lighting will exploit specific advantages of LEDs

rather than to replace conventional technologies.

Vertical integration

Philips executives were keen to stress the benefits of vertical integra-

tion, citing synergies in marketing and manufacturing which could

lead to enhanced productivity and cost savings. The benefits of bring-

ing an entire supply chain in-house, rather than outsourcing certain

aspects, depend largely on the maturity of the technology. While appli-

cations for mobile phone handsets are relatively mature, the applica-

tions targeted by Philips, such as LCD backlighting, automotive

headlights and of course general illumination, are at a very early stage

of development. This presents the opportunity for rapid innovation

within an integrated supply chain.

Perhaps the most revealing segment of the press conference announc-

ing the Lumileds deal came when Philips management team spoke

about the enhanced influence that Philips will be able to exert over the

LED development activities of its soon-to-be in-house supplier.

But where will this leave external customers? Small companies

using low volumes of Luxeon devices – companies which Lumileds

has been happy to serve in the past in order to get the technology out

into many varied market segments – may feel the squeeze when

Lumileds’ attention becomes focused on its giant parent. Lumileds is

of course keen to stress that this will not be a problem, and Mike Holt,

the company’s CEO, said that Lumileds’ customers will “remain unaf-

fected as the company moves forward”.

At the recent Next LED Generation conference in London (see

In July, Philips installed warm-white LED street lights in the Dutch

town of Ede . T he luminaires contained six 3 W white and 12 1 W

amber LEDs. Philips claimed that Ede was “the first municipal

council in the world to use lampposts with LED technology for

public lighting”. However, Mooncell i nstalled 30 LED street lights

in Coryton, a suburb of Cardiff, Wales, as far back as 2003. The

Econo-Lum luminaires contain 36 1 W LEDs and are mounted on

6m poles. Mooncell says that it is now trialing a unit with 24 3 W

LEDs for the same site.

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