Japanese UV-LED firm Nitride Semiconductor has filed a patent infringement lawsuit with the US District Court, Northern District of California against Rayvio, a California based UV-LED manufacturer.
In the complaint, Nitride is seeking injunction, damages and accounting, asserting that Rayvio infringes Nitride’s patent (US 6,861,270, ‘Method for Manufacturing Gallium Nitride Compound Semiconductor and Light Emitting Element’) by manufacturing its products.
The patented invention is said to significantly contribute to improvements in LED light emitting efficacy.
With Shiro Sakai at Tokushima University, Nitride succeeded in developing a highly efficient UV-LED in 2000, and has continued to manufacture and sell UV-LED since then. Nitride says it has made a huge investment in R&D to develop and modify UV-LED, which has been quite challenging.
