NIMS Restructures Red Phosphor Licensing

The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), a Japanese scientific research center, has split the licensing for its comprehensive patent on red phosphor.

The patent, which has been licensed to phosphor manufacturing companies, has been divided into two groups: a group of materials and manufacturing patents related to the manufacture of phosphors, and a group of application patents related to the manufacture of LED devices. NIMS will then enter into new licensing contracts with applicable companies.

The new licensing arrangement will apply to the patents on the nitride red phosphor by the name of CASN, SCASN, or 1113 phosphor. Originally, companies manufacturing LED devices were able to purchase such phosphors from phosphor manufacturing companies holding NIMS' comprehensive patent license and use them to produce products without acquiring an application patent license from NIMS. However, this licensing arrangement did not allow NIMS to effectively enforce its patent right to prevent companies from purchasing such phosphors from unlicensed phosphor manufacturers and using them to produce LED devices. Thus, the new licensing arrangement will enable NIMS to directly license devices to manufacturers.