CompoundSemi Online - The Original Compound Semiconductor Industry Newspaper

September 20, 2002...Nichia has settled now with both Osram and Toyoda Gosei. Can an end to its ongoing, very trying disputes with Cree (and vice versa) be far off? For the greater benefit of the entire industry, we sincerely hope that Nichia's recent settlements are a sign of hope that all litigation will end on each of their GaN fronts, including litigation involving patent rights and adaquate past compensation by Nichia to their former employee and GaN breakthrough guru, Shuji Nakamura, who is now a professor at UCSB in Santa Barbara, California in the USA. The dispute between Professor Nakamura and Nichia also appears to be coming to an end. According to the Mainichi Daily News and other Asian sources, the Japanese courts ruled yesterday (Thursday, September 19, 2002), that Nichia does, in fact, rightfully own the patents to the work done by Professor Nakamura while he was in Nichia's employ. "Nichia Corporation owns the patent because he (Nakamura) had conceded it to the company," said Presiding Judge Ryoichi Mimura at the Tokyo District Court." The issue of adaquate compensation for past work is evidently still pending. Individual details aside... no matter who "wins" in any of this litigation, it's inevitably the scientific community that loses because attorney fees now range from $150/hr for an associate to $400/hr for a full-fledged patent litigator, and that hard-to-stop outpour must necessarily be subtracted from productive work, R&D, employee salaries, and shareholder value. We congratulate Nichia and Toyoda Gosei for finally settling their differences and we heartily encourage others involved in similar suits to settle their claims and disputes as quickly as possible, and let us all get on with the business of bringing GaN technology to the forefront of semiconductor progress where it belongs and not hidden away in the courts.

Remember the Wright Brothers? The saga of the first humans to take flight, circa 1907, is a timely analogy for those who make patent issues their priority. In an excellent PBS retrospective called Chasing the Sun, we're reminded that, although the Wright Brothers hit on the right technology at the time, instead of focusing on improving their original biplane design, they distracted their own efforts, launching lawsuit after lawsuit against rival plane-makers. According to the PBS report, "The Wrights claimed that these competing manufacturers infringed upon the patents they owned. The legal battles continued for years. The case was eventually decided in 1914. While the courts sided with the Wrights, their victory was ultimately a hollow one." In the longrun, the Wright Brothers' company became defunct and their competition picked up where the brothers left off, "continuing to soar higher, faster and farther." I don't know if the GaN companies involved in this rash of suits realize it or not, but other GaN developers are simply going around the dispute area, and as a result, starting to soar, higher and faster and further.

ATMI's $9.5 million GaN contract from ONR is an example of the kind of good news we like to hear. It reminds us that the DoD cliché, "Dual Use" was coined for a reason. Americans, like everyone else, want to see, feel and believe that they're getting something worthwhile for their tax monies and that those millions are not spent only on weapons systems, but that they also go to developing something as personally satisfying as a next gen DVD system. GaN technology, which had been in the lab for decades, came to the manufacturing floor in the mid 90s, thanks largely to Shuji Nakamura, first as a high brightness blue LED. Shuji's co-professor at UCSB, Steve DenBaars, is the one I and others credit with bringing to everyone's attention, GaN's virtues as robust electronic devices (circa 1999 according to our historic Nitride 101 video featuring Shuji and Steve). ATMI's award for their key 4" GaN HEMT work (and note that contracts like this are based more on what a company has already done rather than what they intend to do) is what I see as just the beginning of something quite wonderful. Couple ATMI's award with Sony's unveiling of their blue laser-based DVD system to the public (ref: Sept. 16 2nd editorial) and you start to get the real feel for the spirit of "Dual Use." All the key GaN developers, now obviously led by ATMI, are being given these taxpayer-funded monies because the USA's DoD R&D champions (ONR, DARPA, Wright Labs, etc.) finally have a decent budget, and staying ahead of everyone else in military electronics takes priority, especially now with all this saber-rattling going on in Washington DC. But, as we all know, the same 4 inch GaN substrate can also drive the next gen DVD system, and probably do so even more easily and cost-effectively than it can drive an esoteric military electronic system. Note the key word in ATMI's contract... Robust!.

The blue spectrum LED sector is one of the few bright spots in the commercial sector, and GaN for electronic devices, along with that good old recalcitrant super-tough technology, SiC (recall that Cree scored DoD contracts for continued 3" SiC development that totaled over $20 million this summer) are obviously the stars of current mil/aero-related R&D funding, but none of the companies are making near the profits or at the capacities they were two to three years ago. GaN epi pilot lines are obviously warming up, designs are being tweaked for higher yields on progressively bigger substrates, whether they be sapphire, SiC, silicon, or... the potential winner-take-all in the longrun, large diameter GaN on a native substrate, but they're not where they could have been had Nichia turned to licensing in 1996, when Shuji first demonstrated his lab's 10,000 hour device.

ATMI Awarded USA Government Contract for 4" Bulk GaN

Anaren Makes $8.75/share Offer to Buy Rest of Celeritek

WJ Communications Courted by Fox Paine

Asian Outlook Envisions Increased Innovation

Latest Market Numbers Out of China

Taiwan Launches Broadband Industry Association

Finland's Modulight Awarded Government Contracts to Develop Next Gen Opto Components

Skyworks Launches Quad-Band GSM/GPRS Power Amp Module

RF Micro Devices Has Shipped Over 2 Million WLAN Transceivers

Anadigics Shipping CDMA Power Amps to AirPrime for PDA Applications

RSoft Solves Photonic Design Challenges with new Bandgap Tool

Nortel Closes Down the CoreTek Operation

Why Pay $400/hr to Litigators When It Could Go To Progress & Innovation?