| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 管理學院高階主管管理碩士學程 === 104 === ABSTRACT
Light emitting diode (LED) is a type of semiconductor that emits light. Featuring long service life, compact size and resistance to impact and cracking, LEDs are more suitable for lighting compared to traditional light sources. LED’s features of compact size, high illumination intensity, color stability and low power consumption make this element perfect for lighting in place of incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent tubes. Existing companies around the world are doing their best to expand their share of market, while new comers in semiconductor manufacturing, solar power and display panels are aiming at this field of business. However, they have found that many of the core patents are in the hand of major American and Japanese manufacturers or Taiwan-based firms that had a head start. In order to develop technology for the application of new products, new comers have to find an alternative direction of R&D, which makes it unavoidable to come up with a strategy of analyze, plan and avoid existing patents.
The white light LED, among all others, features multiple parallel technologies, such as single, double and multiple phosphors. The techniques of manufacturing are complicated and patents dominate these multiple techniques and complex manufacturing processes. An analysis on patent application and layout from the LED technology point of view will benefit the future of LED firms.
Looking at the number of patents, the number of patents filed reached its peak at 555 in 2008. Since then, the number of applications has displayed a steady decline, probably as a result of the maturity of LED technologies. When looking at the distribution of patents by countries, Taiwan is proud of the number of patents it owns. From the point of view of the lifecycle, the LED industry is globally reaching its maturity. In a time like this, the LED technologies are close to the maturity of development, the firms are making great profits and the numbers of patent applications and inventors maintain at a high level, but the growth is slowing down. The same conclusion is reached when analyzing the core patents of LED industry.
Based on patents, LED firms have initiated a massive number of patent litigations. However, a close look at the LED patents owned by Taiwanese firms indicates that there is still the risk of infringement lawsuits by some patent holders despite the license obtained by Taiwanese firms from other patent holders. Taiwanese firms are mostly small in size, which makes it impossible for individual firms to invest a large quantity of manpower, materials and money on comparing the global white light LED patents and technical contents held by Taiwanese firms. For this, a good solution is a strategic alliance established among Taiwanese firms to improve the collective competitiveness in the worldwide market in a mutually competitive and yet collaborative manner.
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