Post a CommentSony Blu-ray, Moto Razr among targets of Columbia professor patent-infringement claims
Included among the 30 companies named in the case are Hitachi, LG Electronics, Nokia, Pioneer, Samsung, Sanyo Electric, Sharp, Sony, Sony Ericsson Mobile, and Toshiba.
By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- Electronic News, 3/20/2008
A retired Columbia university professor has alleged the infringement of light-emitting diodes (LED) and laser diodes (LD) patents by 30 consumer electronics makers, including Sony, Nokia, and Toshiba.
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has agreed to hear a case filed by Gertrude Neumark Rothschild that seeks to block the importation of a wide array of consumer electronics.
With the action, Rothschild has alleged that major electronics manufacturers in Asia and Europe have violated her patent for producing LEDs and LDs in products, such as video players using Sony's Blu-ray format, Motorola Razr phones, and Hitachi camcorders.
Included among the 30 companies are Hitachi, LG Electronics, Nokia, Pioneer, Samsung, Sanyo Electric, Sharp, Sony, Sony Ericsson Mobile, and Toshiba.
"Dr. Rothschild made a seminal breakthrough in the production of the blue and ultraviolet LEDs that are essential to a wide variety of consumer electronics products today," Albert Jacobs, Jr, a partner at Dreier LLP, the law firm making the claims on Rothschild’s behalf, said in a statement today. "She richly deserves both scientific as well as commercial recognition for her work."
Rothschild is currently a professor emeritus of materials science and engineering at Columbia. According to a statement from Dreier, she conducted “ground-breaking” research in the 1980s and 1990s into the electrical and optical properties of wide band-gap semiconductors. The research, the firm said, has proven pivotal in the development of short-wavelength emitting (blue/violet) diodes used in consumer electronics.
Rothschild was issued a US patent in 1993 that covers a method of producing wide band-gap semiconductors for LEDs and LDs in the blue/ultraviolet end of the spectrum. The portion of her work at issue in the ITC case focuses on using gallium nitride-based semiconductor material in LEDs and LDs.
Rothschild previously settled issues of infringement of her patents with Nichia, OSRAM, Toyoda Gosei, and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV.
