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Semiconductors and electronics

Semiconductors and electronics

LED firm rejects Nobel laureate’s olive branch

14 Nov 2014 Michael Banks
Mending fences: Shuji Nakamura wanted to meet Nichia's president

Nobel laureate Shuji Nakamura says that he is not going to try and improve relations with his former employer, which he sued in 2001 over his development of the blue light-emitting diode (LED), after receiving a snub from them earlier this month. Nakamura, who shared this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics for the invention of efficient blue LEDs, offered an olive branch to Nichia by asking to meet with the head of the company, only to be told by the firm to spend his “precious time” on research instead.

Nakamura, who shared this year’s prize with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, originally joined the Japanese LED firm Nichia in 1979 after studying electronics engineering at the University of Tokushima. While at Nichia, he was awarded a PhD in 1994 from Tokushima, before leaving the firm in 2000 to join the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the US.

Lengthy court case

However, in 2001 Nakamura filed a lawsuit against Nichia claiming that he was not rewarded sufficiently for gaining Nichia key patents related to blue LEDs. After a four-year battle in the Japanese courts, in 2004 Nakamura won a one-off payment of ¥20bn ($193m) – much more than the ¥20,000 that Nakamura received from Nichia each time he filed a patent. Nichia then appealed to a higher court, before reaching a settlement to pay Nakamura around ¥843m in 2005.

But following his Nobel win, Nakamura said that he wanted to rebuild ties with Nichia. In a press conference last month in Tokyo after being presented with the Order of Culture by the Japanese government, Nakamura expressed his gratitude to Nichia president Eiji Ogawa and the team of six other researchers who contributed to their work on blue LEDs. Nakamura then offered to visit Tokushima for talks with Ogawa.

I am not going to do anything to improve the relationship with Nichia from my side
Shuji Nakamura, University of California, Santa Barbara

However, in a statement Nichia said that Nakamura’s words of gratitude towards Nichia were enough, and that he should not be spending his “precious time” visiting the company but rather focusing on his research. Nakamura told Physics World that he is “disappointed” that Nichia turned down his request to “mend the relationship”. Indeed, he now says that he will not respond with a further request. “I am not going to do anything to improve the relationship with Nichia from my side,” says Nakamura.

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