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Apple, Amazon, Microsoft & More Settle Lawsuits With Boston University
curtwoodward writes "Boston University hadn't been very aggressive with intellectual property lawsuits in the past. But that changed in 2012, when the school began suing the biggest names in consumer tech, alleging infringement of a patent on blue LEDs — a patent that, no coincidence, is set to expire at the end of 2014. As of today, about 25 big tech names have now settled the lawsuits, using 'defensive' patent firm RPX. A dozen or so more defendants are probably headed that way. And BU is no longer a quiet patent holder."
The patent isn't on the mere idea of blue LEDs, but on how precisely to make a particlar blue LED, which was not obvious. Mere ideas cannot be patented, contrary to what many Slashdot posters would like you to believe.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#The_blue_and_white_LED
The guy who made the first blue LED won a 1.3 million dollar prize. I'm assuming the reason BU is able to collect royalties is that their method is the one that's being used commercially. Look at the description in wikipedia: Does p-doping Indium Galium Nitride seem like a trivial process?
Oh I know, crazy huh? How could they let this patent get by with the clearly obvious prior art of all those blue LEDs that helped light up gadgets in the 80s.
Not like every consumer product featuring LEDs prior to 1994 or so was using red, green, yellow, and amber because depositing the gallium mix required for the blue spectrum bandgap could only be done on a ruby substrate at the time due to the normal process destroying a silicon substrate, thereby making blue LEDs insanely expensive.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
In the United States you do not have to be the manufacturer to be sued for patent violation. Users are also at risk, especially if they have deeper pockets. Daft, but true.
(Emphasis mine) I am sure there will be a long discussion about whether someone using a device made with the patented process is themselves "using" the patented process.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
1. I have a PhD in GaN LEDs, and work at an LED company
2. I've worked with "the guy" who won that $1.3M prize for inventing the GaN LED
3. I've worked on large, multi institutions government funded GaN-based projects that Moustakas was also involved on, I am very framiliar with the last 2.5 decades of his research in particular
4. I am very familiar with both the devices and the IP of the field in genearl since I have a few of these kinds of patents
This lawsuit makes no sense. First of all many if not most of the companies don't manufacture any GaN based LEDs. Second of all, that patent covers a technique that no one uses in commercial GaN LEDs. Literally no one. That patent very specifically covers GaN crystal growth by MBE (molecular beam epitaxy). Every single GaN LED company (Nichia, Cree, Soraa, etc.) uses MOCVD (Metal organic chemical vapor deposition) techniques. The claims are of course quite cryptic and difficult to determine their entire implication, but from what I can one of the mains things he is claiming to patent is any GaN structure grown on a foreign substrate with a low temperature poly-crystalline layer. Nearly all commercial LEDs are grown on sapphire of SiC with the use of some kind of low temperature poly-crystalline buffer layer. However there is lots of prior art on this (notice the dates!)
http://jjap.jsap.jp/link?JJAP/30/L1705/
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/48/5/10.1063/1.96549
He also tries to discuss the potential dopant atoms, none of the ones that are mentioned are currently used. Of course I'm not sure exactly which claim their lawsuits are hinging on, but all of the meaningful claims in there are covered by prior art (journal publications) and/or better, old, stronger patents.
tl;dr this patent is bullshit, it covers things that have prior art, or aren't useful