Mitsubishi Chemical files LED-phosphor lawsuit against Intematix

Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit in Korea against Intematix and a distributor, over red phosphors.

Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC), the Tokyo, Japan-based phosphor, LED and lamp manufacturer, has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit in Korea against US-based Intematix Corporation and a Korean distributor, GVP.

Filed in Seoul Central District Court, the infringement lawsuit seeks to prohibit the two companies from importing and selling certain red-emitting phosphor products in Korea.

Mitsubishi Chemical claims that the products in question infringe a patent in Korea that covers red-emitting phosphors. The patent is owned by MCC and National Institute of Material Science.

Red-emitting phosphors are commonly used in warm-white LEDs, in combination with other phosphors, to provide the desired emission spectrum.

MCC says that it owns many other patents that are also relevant to CASN and SCASN phosphors, adding: "Should a party infringe any of MCC's patents, we will take every appropriate measure without overlooking it."

If you talk to lighting designers about new technology—as we did recently—it's hard not to conclude that the incandescent bulb is headed for almost certain extinction. The reasons seem obvious: LEDs are a lot more energy efficient and much (much) longer lasting.

What's not to like? Well, for now, price. But once economics of scale are achieved and the cost of LEDs come down, then it's simply a matter of time before the incandescent—at one time, a radical breakthrough in its own right—shuffles off into obsolescence.

"My biggest concern is that the incandescent lamp will completely disappear, and with it the spectrum that it brings," she told our Barbara Eldredge recently.

This means that all of the color that has been devised over my lifetime will no longer be the color that my eye recognizes. LEDs are great—they add to the toolbox. But if you look at the spectrum of an LED and the spectrum of an incandescent, they're just fundamentally different.

LEDs don't produce that warm candlelight glow of the incandescent bulb at a low reading. Unfortunately, this has happened throughout the history of lighting. Each new lamp has been colder than the one before it. Lighting today is very, very cold, tilting almost to the inhuman.

So I guess I'm old fashioned, like the people who complained about missing the glow of gaslights when electricity came in. But I do feel very strongly that the toolbox should be complete, and that you shouldn't entirely give up one thing just to have another.