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Editorial: An Interview with Bob Steele on What to Expect from This Year's Strategies In Light Conference
 
... On February 7-9, Strategies Unlimited will hold its sixth annual conference on the high-brightness LED industry - Strategies in Light 2005. Since the first Strategies in Light in 2000, this conference has come to be recognized as the premier annual event that addresses the markets, applications and industry developments...
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Nichia Settles with Shuji Nakamura for $8 Million

January 13, 2005...Updated from our January 11th Breaking News... In a flurry of blue spectrum LED related news reports out of Asia earlier this week, we learned that Nichia Corporation has settled its dispute with former employee and commercial innovator of GaN LEDs, Shuji Nakamura. The settlement ended with an agreement to pay Shuji, who is now a Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) 608 million yen, plus an additional 230 million yen as back compensation for the delay he has incurred while the issue was in litigation (which totals approximately $8 million US dollars). Shuji's original demand was 20.1 billion yen. In February of 2004, his percentage of the Nichia revenues was estimated by the court to be worth 60 billion yen, based on the company's revenues and licensing fees. He was awarded the 20 billion yen (appx. $189 million), but that decision was appealed by Nichia. In December, the Tokyo High Court recommended that an amicable settlement be reached between Nakamura and Nichia. The high court also proposed a settlement cap of 600 million yen.

Details of the settlement were reported by Nikkei Net in a news article titled Nichia To Pay Blue LED Inventor Y840mn In Settlement which was followed-up by an analysis titled Vague Settlement Reached In Blue LED Lawsuit. In communication directly with Shuji, he referred us also to the headline news in Japan Times for his response and the facts as he knows them. (That article also carries an excellent picture of this popular blue spectrum innovator.) Evidently both parties were not satisfied with the outcome, however, as reported in a third article over Nikkei Net, titled: Nichia Settlement Questioned By Both Researchers, Industry. The case is also being viewed as catalyst for patent award reform throughout Japan. Note that the complete Nikkei Net articles are viewed by subscription only. For those of you researching this story for your news outlets, our litany of Nichia vs. Nakamura-related news and editorials over the years, which is extensive and complete, can be easily accessed via this link.

Sale Date for Oriol White LED Patents Set for Feb. 3rd

January 5, 2005...As initially covered in our Nov. 16th headline news announcing the auctioning off of Oriol's very interesting and uniquely core white LED-related IP, the date for that auction has now been set and a minimum bidding price has been set at $1.5 million. The date and starting time of the auction will be February 3, 2005 at 5pm, Pacific Standard Time. The sale location is at the offices of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps which is at 121 Spear Street, Suite 200 in San Francisco, California USA and telephonic bidding arrangements will be allowed. All one has to do to participate is to contact Mey SaePhan at tel: +1 (415) 356-4691. The case number is 03-56308. Bidders also have to be ready with some serious money as the bidding will be in increments of $50,000 (USD). Initial bids must be also be accompanied by $100,000 (USD) bank certified funds. Here's the link to detailed information. Note that Carol Wu is the trustee for this unprecedented bankruptcy case (unprecedented for our industry, in that this is an IP auction of truly leading edge, wafer scale white LED technology). Carol can be reached directly at tel: +1 408 404-7040 and email: cwu@cwutrustee.com for general auction information. For information on the IP up for auction, the contacts are IP lawyers Song Jung, Esq or Mark Kresloff, Esq. at McKenna, Long & Aldridge who can be contacted at tel +1 202 496-7500. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members...

Strategies Unlimited Posts Agenda for Annual Strategies In Light Meet
Jo Ann McDonald, Founding Editor

January 5, 2005...Make your reservations now for the annual "must attend" Strategies In Light (SIL) conference which will be held at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel in beautiful Burlingame, California USA (I know of Burlingame's beauty first hand as Burlingame is this founding editor's old home town! I also had the pleasure of consulting to Strategies Unlimited and naming and helping coordinate the show when SIL first conceived of SIL six years ago). Strategies Unlimited's intrepid GaN and HB-LED guru, Bob Steele, has again put together an excellent agenda which you can view via this link. To your viewing left, in this issue's McDonald Report, is an interview with Bob on what to expect at this year's SIL conference. The Tuesday/Wednesday full day sessions start with his annual market forecast, then a full review of applications and trends, includes country activities and national programs, and then winds up tackling the technical issues head on. PennWell's SIL will also feature two pre-conference workshops this year. The morning workshop on Monday, February 7th will be on Optical System Design for LEDs followed by an afternoon workshop on Drivers for LEDs. So mark your calendar and pick up the phone or email your reservations. If this meet is anything like the first one six years ago, you better reserve your seat early. As is so often the case with this sort of top flight executive meet, the real action is usually in the hallways and at the breaks and meals so generously provided for by the roster of SIL sponsors, which you'll note includes our LIGHTimes and SolidStateLighting.net. A comprehensive promo with hotlinks to whatever you need to get your reservations in on time is at the bottom of this newsletter. Our business and editorial staff looks forward to seeing you there!

Cree Sets Next Earnings Report for Jan. 13th

January 5, 2005...While we don't normally cover the quarterly conference call of the publicly held companies, Cree's position in the compound semi and SSL industries is so unique and pivotal that the Durham, North Carolina USA traditionally becomes the exception to any rule. And Cree's earnings calls always reveal something new and illuminating about the blue spectrum sector we traditionally champion in these pages. So mark your calendar to tune in Thursday, January 13th, to hear what Cree's President and CEO, Chuck Swoboda, has to say about how things faired for Cree in the closing months of 2004. The call updating financial analysts will take place live at 5pm Eastern Standard Time in the USA and will be webcast and archived for replay through January 27th. To access the call either live or as replay, simply go to Cree's website at www.cree.com and click on the Investor Relations section, then click on the icon for the webcast.

Keith Evans Becomes President/CEO of Kyma
Jo Ann McDonald

January 5, 2005...Update your contact list as longtime industry, really cool guy, nitride material growth expert and wide bandgap (WBG) community catalyst, Keith Evans Ph.D. packs his bags and heads for his new assignment in Research Triangle Park and starts to settle into his new assignment as President and CEO of Kyma Technologies, Inc. of Raleigh, North Carolina USA. Yes, he's really all those things! Keith joins a strong technical team that remains headed by co-founders Mark Williams who serves as COO (Mark hailed originally from NCSU and started Kyma with his famed NCSU professor Jerry Cuomo) and Andrew (Drew) Hanser who also got his start in GaN-related substrate technology with NCSU's wide bandgap guru Professor Bob Davis, who is now at Carnegie Mellon. Keith has over 20 years experience in the compound semi industry and has held several key executive positions from operations, technology, and business development. He began his colorful career at the famed US Air Force Research Labs at Wright Pat AFB where he led a group of scientists and engineers focused on advancing the technology of MBE for novel CS device applications. Keith then moved into the commercial sector via stints in epi wafer supply (QED/IQE) epi growth equipment (Veeco's MBE equipment arm) and in laser manufacturing via SLI. His most recent post was serving Crystal IS as Sr. VP, Business Development and as their Chief Marketing Officer.

Keith generously gives of his time to help advance the industry as a whole and is well known as a highly regarded WBG technology leader and WBG community catalyst. He organized our recent Wide Bandgap Business Opportunities Workshop as a prelude to the annual CS Outlook conference which was held Dec. 6-8th in Dallas, Texas. (The online post of those proceedings will be available shortly to Outlook attendees, by the way. Keith has received many inquiries asking for the workshop slides. Contact tomg@compoundsemi.com for your password). We would like to publicly thank Keith again for the excellent job he did bringing the WBG Biz Opps Workshop together and wish this WBG leader the very best in his new role guiding Kyma to its next stage in GaN substrate development. If you want to contact Keith, his new coordinates are: Keith R. Evans, Ph.D., President & CEO, Kyma Technologies, Inc., 8829 Midway West Road, Raleigh, NC 27617 USA, General company phone: 919-789-8880 and his new email is: evans@kymatech.com. We had a great indepth chat with Keith, Mark and Drew today as Keith logged in his first 1.5 days at the Kyma help, and that conversation will be featured in an upcoming McDonald Report underscoring the remarkable progress Kyma is already making in their selling their two inch GaN wafers to blue laser, LED and electronic device developers (yes, these are the real thing! Not just layers of GaN) with larger diameter substrates wafers in development.

Super 3G Standard Embraced by 26 Cellphone Service Companies
CompoundSemi News Staff

January 5, 2005...Agreement to work on a unified standard for anything related to the advanced compound semi industry is good news, and the fact that 26 cellular phone service companies and data communications equipment manufacturers in the USA, Asia, and Europe, led by NTT, Cingular Wireless , China Mobile Communications and device makers like NEC, Alcatel and Simens makes it sound like a probably reality. According to an indepth story carried over Nikkei Net, the Super 3G standard is in the making and is estimated to become available in 2009, so if you're not already designing to it, you probably should. Super 3G evidently allows transmission of high resolution video instantaneously, offering speeds of 30-100 megabits per second, which is evidently as fast as current fiberoptic broadband service. Super 3G cell phones would also gain greater resolution in their video transmission (shades of Star Trek communicators... and beyond). The move to Super 3G true standards should also increase development and commercialization of handsets with larger LCD screens for games and movie viewing as well as handsets with video camera functions. But wait, there's more. The move is also expected, by companies like DoCoMo, to up their investment in base station upgrades... and as we learned at this year's CS Outlook, the entry of GaN electronic devices into base stations means that those shacks you see at the base of the cellular towers would be reduced to a little box at the base of the tower. So there's hope for telecom after all, and it's looking like it will be driven by GaN.

Seoul Semiconductor Arrives on Everyone's SSL Radar Screen with an LED lamp for AC Power
Jo Ann McDonald, Founding Editor

January 5, 2005...Seoul Semiconductor (SSC) has heretofore maintained a low profile in the USA, until recently, but this major Korean LED packaging house is quickly coming becoming a very important company to the Solid State Lighting (SSL) industry the more we learn about them and the more of their people we have the pleasure of getting to know. SSC most recently announced that they have developed an LED lamp for AC power. The chip can be used in connection with a general AC power by only one light source. SSC plans to supply this chip through a packaging process through LED for the illumination market. Meanwhile, SSC has filed for a patent of this chip and announced to plans to hold a product demonstration in January 2005. SSC kindly contacted us here at SSL.net and LIGHTimes to publicize their new lamp, and as we begin our association with this company, we started doing what we always do with a company new to our pages, and took a close look at their very impressive website and talked to a few folks who have had the pleasure of talking with the at shows such as Light Fair and Light+Building. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members...

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Commentary & Perspective...

An Interview with Bob Steele on What to Expect from This Year's Strategies In Light Conference

January 5, 2005...On February 7-9, Strategies Unlimited will hold its sixth annual conference on the high-brightness LED industry - Strategies in Light 2005. Since the first Strategies in Light in 2000, this conference has come to be recognized as the premier annual event that addresses the markets, applications and industry developments for HB LEDs. Recently we talked with Conference Chair and leading HB LED industry analyst Robert V. (Bob) Steele about the HB LED industry and the outlook for this year's Strategies in Light. (More information about the conference can be found at www.strategiesinlight.com.)

JMcD: How is the HB LED market doing these days, and what are some of the major trends in the industry?

RVS: This is a very interesting time in the history of the HB LED industry. It continues to grow at over 40% per year, and is approaching nearly $4 billion in total revenue. Mobile phone applications now account for over half of the HB LED market, but those applications will start to saturate in the next couple of years. So the industry is looking to several new applications to keep the market growing. These include automotive forward lighting and backlights for larger LCD displays. And LED illumination continues to expand into new applications and to be one of the fastest growing markets.

JMcD: How will the Strategies in Light 2005 program reflect these trends?

RVS: We have had several featured presentations on automotive forward lighting in recent years, and this year we will have a featured presentation by HB LED supplier Cotco of Hong Kong on LED backlights for larger LCD displays. LED illumination (solid-state lighting) is an ongoing and important theme for SIL. We have two talks (LumiDrives and Color Kinetics) that address issues surrounding the use of LEDs for white light applications, as well as presentations (Lamina Ceramics and LPI) that look at the design and application of high lumen output LED arrays, and a talk from OptiLED on the current status of LED technology for lighting applications.

JMcD: Other applications continue to be important, don't they?

RVS: Absolutely. As in previous years, we will address those in application-specific talks, including the LED video sign market (Lighthouse Technologies), the channel letter and contour lighting market (SloanLED), interior automotive lighting applications (OSRAM), flash lamps for mobile phones (eLite), and the municipal signage and outdoor luminaire market (Leotek).

JMcD: Asia is becoming a major supply source for the HB LED industry. How does the Asia supply situation fit into the conference agenda?

RVS: You are right about Asia, and to reflect its increasing importance we have included several sessions that address that region. Our resident Asia expert Bob Walker of YEBY Associates will lead a panel discussion with Taiwan chip suppliers Formosa Epitaxy and Arima on the Taiwan supply situation. And we are fortunate to have two high-level representatives from China and South Korea to talk about their countries' HB LED industries and national solid-state lighting programs.

JMcD: In the past you have had presentations and a panel discussion with the "Big Five" HB LED suppliers. Will they be on the program this year?

RVS: Their participation has been a real highlight of our past conferences, and we will continue it this year. Usually we have asked the "Big Five" to talk about their latest products and technology. But because of all the changes taking place in the HB LED industry, we have decided to change course a bit. This year's discussion topic will be: "High-Brightness LED Industry Outlook for the Next Five Years". As usual, we will have panelists from Cree, Nichia, Toyoda Gosei, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors and Lumileds.

JMcD: At CS Outlook in December, there was considerable talk about getting the ball rolling in driving standards in the solid state lighting sector to help the HB LED manufacturers and packagers better tailor their goods to that market. Will you be addressing standards issues at this year's conference?

RVS: Standards is certainly an issue of increasing importance in the HB LED industry. To address that issue we will have a presentation by Jianzhong Jiao of North American Lighting who has been intimately involved in developing standards for LEDs for automotive lighting. He has some excellent ideas on how that process could be applied to the general lighting industry.

JMcD: A final, and somewhat personally proud question, given you're again holding the conference in my lovely old hometown of Burlingame. Why do you always have the conference in the San Francisco area?

RVS: Strategies Unlimited has been located in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 years, so I guess we are somewhat geographically prejudiced. But on a more practical note, we find that many of our attendees enjoy the mild weather of San Francisco, especially in February, and we have never found a reason to change location (although we have had a few requests to locate SIL in Hawaii). It also turns out that San Francisco is almost exactly halfway between Europe and Asia, so it is convenient for our many overseas attendees.

JMcD: Any other parting thoughts on the conference?

RVS: Each year we think that the current SIL will be the biggest and best ever, and this year is no exception. We have a great line-up of speakers and topics, and a very supportive group of sponsors. I'm looking forward to seeing many longtime friends and colleagues from the HB LED industry in February.

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