Epistar does patent deal with ITRI

Epistar Corp (晶元光電), Taiwan's biggest maker of chips for light-emitting diodes (LED), inked an agreement with a government-sponsored research institution yesterday to obtain eight patents with relatively lower royalties that boost luminous effect and will help them avoid disputes over intellectual property rights.

"With the new patents, Epistar will have more intensive coverage in LED manufacturing," said Chen Tse-peng (陳澤澎), a vice president of Epistar, told reporters after signing the contract with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to make chips using patents owned by the researcher.

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.