A Japanese company embroiled in a high-profile court battle over a lucrative lighting technology said yesterday it has relinquished its rights over the patent.
The legal battle between Nichia and its former employee Shuji Nakamura over the patent related to the blue light-emitting diode, or LED, received widespread media attention in Japan as a symbol of the fight between a powerful company and an ordinary "salaryman."
Nichia Corp said it wants to avoid fees to maintain a patent because updates in the technology make it no longer needed.
Since the lawsuit was filed by Nakamura in 2001, the company argued that his patent was one of many and was not crucial for the technology widely used in traffic signals, mobile phones, large screens and next-generation DVDs.
Nakamura, who quit Nichia and is now professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argued that his research and key patent that became the center of the legal wrangling was a critical key step in the highly lucrative lighting technology. He became a bit of a hero here, appearing in talk shows and TV ads.
In 2004, Nakamura won a landmark Tokyo District Court ruling, which awarded him ¥20 billion (US$170 million) in compensation for the disputed patent. The court said in its ruling the invention was so lucrative it was worth more than what it had awarded -- the amount Nakamura had demanded in his lawsuit.
He never got that money because Nichia appealed to a higher court. Nakamura reluctantly settled for ¥840 million (US$7 million) in compensation last year. At that time, he said he wanted to take his fight all the way to the Japanese Supreme Court but his lawyers advised him against it.
"Japan is treating people as though they're all robots," he told reporters at a Tokyo hall last year. "I'm so lucky I work in the United States. I can't imagine working in Japan again."
"The judicial system in Japan is rotten," Nakamura said. "I am outraged. That's all I have to say."
Nichia, based in Tokushima, southwestern Japan, said yesterday it still felt it was entitled to the patents but had accepted the settlement because it wanted to get on with business rather than waste time arguing about compensation. Nichia said the technology in the 404 Patent was outdated and the company has not used it since 1997.
"The 404 Patent was not a diamond in the rough as Nak-amura claimed," Nichia said in a statement.
It has repeatedly said that Nakamura did not work on the lighting technology alone and that other Nichia workers have also made technological contributions and have not complained.
Nakamura's legal battle has helped raise consciousness in Japan about respect for inventors. Some companies have begun to pay employees more for patents, and cash awards by courts for inventions have also gradually been on the rise.
For decades, major Japanese companies tended to take workers' sacrifices and contributions for granted. While working at Nichia, Nakamura said all he ever got was ¥20,000 for each of the dozens of patents he developed.
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