Epistar Corp (
"With the new patents, Epistar will have more intensive coverage in LED manufacturing," said Chen Tse-peng (
LEDs made using the technologies granted by ITRI would boost brightness by 20-50 percent and save power, he said.
Epistar will only have to pay tens of millions dollars to own the patents, ITRI said.
Taiwanese LED companies, which entered the LED industry about two decades ago, are facing a growing IPR threat from bigger firms, which commonly use patent law suits as major tools to slow the development of rivals.
Epistar owns about 200 patents for making LED chips and has another 300 pending approval, which still leaves the firm far behind its bigger competitors, which on average hold over 1,000 patents.
Epistar makes LED chips mainly for mobile phones and it is now developing technologies to make LEDs used in cars and LCD TVs.
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