Look at the "green light" that illuminates the future of mankind - revealing the current status and development trend of the LED lighting industry

Relying on many advantages such as high energy conversion efficiency, low unit power consumption, and long life, LED lighting is blowing a "green whirlwind", not only setting off a "lighting revolution" to replace traditional incandescent lamps around the world, but also becoming one of the most promising technological fields in the world. The "LED Lighting Industry Patent Analysis Report" published by the Patent Office of the State Intellectual Property Office attempts to reveal the current status and development trends of the LED lighting industry and the overall situation of patented technology through patent analysis methods.

Technology: "guerrilla" PK "group army"

Without a series of important inventions by Shuji Nakamura, the "Father of Blue Light", which paved the way for the industrialization of LED lighting, perhaps LED would still be lying in the laboratory with no one interested. In such a rapidly developing emerging industry, an important core patent has rewritten the history of the entire industry. The "Report" also supports this. Although LED lighting patent technology appeared as early as 1955, the real "blowout" development began in 2001. Before 1991, the annual number of applications did not exceed 1,000. In the following ten years, it showed an upward trend of faster and faster development. In 2011, the annual number of applications even reached 31,000, and the total number of global LED lighting patent applications has exceeded 206,000.

Because of this, major manufacturers spare no effort in technology research and development. "Companies such as Nichia, Cree, Philips, and Samsung all have large R&D teams of hundreds of people, and they attach great importance to the systematicness and integrity of patents." said Tang Yueqiang, director of the Semiconductor Division of the Electrical Invention Examination Department of the Patent Office of the State Intellectual Property Office.

If international giants holding a complete set of patents across the entire industry chain are like well-equipped "group armies", then domestic companies are more like "guerrillas" blooming everywhere. "Although the number of applications in our country is large, there are many applicants and they are relatively scattered. The number of applications from a single domestic enterprise applicant is not large, and it is unable to form an overall competitiveness. It is difficult to compete with foreign giants such as Philips, Nichia, Cree, Samsung, etc." The Optoelectronics Department of the Patent Examination Cooperation Center of the Patent Office of the State Intellectual Property Office should Wang Yanni, director of the Second Office of Practical Optics, said, "As a result, it is difficult to form a patent layout for one's own achievements and form layered and multi-faceted protection. When encountering patent disputes with foreign companies, they often focus on one thing and lose another, and it is difficult to form their own protection."

Compared with the "group army", our scale is not only "small and scattered", but also our technical level is "relatively weak". Wang Yanni further pointed out that although my country ranks first in the world in terms of LED patent applications, domestic companies have fewer applications for invention patents with higher gold content. "Taking Guangdong, a major province in the LED lighting industry, as an example, invention patents are less than 30%, and utility model patents are more than 70%. Compared with foreign patent applications, most of them are concentrated in invention patents, which is in sharp contrast. In basic fields such as blue light, white light, MOCVD, substrate, epitaxy, etc., my country's applications are relatively small, and they are concentrated in peripheral fields, lacking core patents."

Industry: "eating meat" in the upstream and "drinking soup" in the downstream

From an industrial perspective, we can find that the vigorous development of the LED lighting industry in the past 10 years is quite similar to the integrated circuit industry back then. There is a famous "Moore's Law" in the integrated circuit industry: the performance of microprocessors doubles every 18 months, while the price remains the same. LEDs are also developing rapidly with the "Haitz's Law" in which brightness doubles every 18 to 24 months and prices decrease by 90% every 10 years.

At the same time, the LED lighting industry has a long industrial chain and extremely high market segmentation. Different manufacturers have different positions in the industrial chain and have a clear division of labor. The "Report" reveals: "The upstream epitaxial growth and chip manufacturing are the parts that best represent the technology and industrial level of the company or the country. They are also the areas with the highest technical content, the most intense patent competition, and the greatest operating risks. They are also the link with the strongest patent barriers. According to statistics, 70% of the profits in the LED industry are concentrated in this link; midstream device and module packaging and downstream display and lighting applications are technology- and labor-intensive industries."

Midstream and upstream companies in the field of LED lighting rely on patent barriers and enjoy "technological dividends." For example, the blue LED technology path invented by Shuji Nakamura is a complete solution that can commercialize LED, and it is an upstream core technology. Relying on the research of Shuji Nakamura, Nichia Chemical has grown from a small company with less than 200 people to a world-renowned LED leader. It holds a large number of core and basic patents on blue LED, and frequently initiates lawsuits against industry giants to obtain high patent licensing fees.

Since upstream technologies are often core patents, it is difficult for domestic companies to bridge the technological gap. They can only rely on buying devices, chips, and epitaxial wafers for processing, which is more like an "assembly factory." Domestic patent applications are also mostly concentrated in lighting components and integrated lamps in the downstream industry chain, such as lamp assembly, heat dissipation treatment, etc. "The technical content of these patent applications is low, and there are often many alternative solutions. Foreign application-level patents have begun to be laid out in aspects such as intelligent control and automatic color temperature adjustment. Domestic enterprise patents cannot be used as an effective weapon to protect themselves and combat competitors." Wang Yanni said.

The "Report" research points out that "the lack of blue-light core patents and white-light patents related to the long-term development of the industry will restrict the long-term development of the domestic industry." Although there are 1,200-1,500 packaging companies in my country, no Chinese company has yet entered the top ten in the ranking of LED packaging technology patent applications. "Building local advantageous enterprises has become an urgent problem that needs to be solved in my country." In addition, relevant patent applications for my country's LED packaging industry are mainly concentrated in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, and regional development is very uneven. .

Outlook: Catching up with core technologies

However, because LED technology is still in the process of continuous advancement, the LED industry is far from mature. The future technology route is constantly developing, and substrate, epitaxy, chip, and packaging technologies are constantly updated. There are still many breakthrough opportunities for my country's LED industry. Therefore, if we find the right time and work hard to break through patent barriers, it is still unclear who will win.

In terms of key technologies, the "Report" recommends that domestic enterprises pay attention to the research and development of new materials such as graphene, semi-polar substrates, and non-polar substrates. These technologies play a very important role in high-power, flexible light-emitting diodes. For example, graphene is not only the hardest and thinnest in the world, but also has strong toughness, electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity, which deserves special attention.

At the same time, Tang Yueqiang introduced that MOCVD equipment is a key equipment in LED manufacturing, accounting for 40% of the product cost; while the heater technology in MOCVD equipment is a core technology, but due to confidentiality reasons, the number of global patent applications is small and it is difficult to cause infringement consequences. It is recommended that domestic enterprises increase R&D investment in this core technology, and at the same time strengthen the investment and development of related precision instrument processing equipment.

The "Report" reminds that since the core patent of blue LED invented by Shuji Nakamura has expired, Chinese companies should actively use these well-known technologies and stand on the "shoulders" of Nichia Chemical to develop more practical and forward-looking patents to make up for my country's lack of core technologies and patents in the upstream field of LED. But at the same time, we must also pay attention to the potential risks brought by foreign giants’ peripheral patent layout around this technology.

At the application level, since domestic manufacturers currently have different standards and interfaces, and nearly 75% of the patents of foreign manufacturers in the field of packaging component interface components are focused on standards and interfaces, the "Report" recommends that Chinese manufacturers should strengthen cooperation and layout in standardized optical components. At the same time, the global trend of networked and intelligent lighting is on the rise, and major foreign manufacturers such as Philips have begun to deploy. Domestic companies should combine street lighting with network-based intelligent drive control and strengthen the research and development and reserves of their core technologies.

Yang Yunfeng, deputy director of the Applied Optics Office of the Beijing Center for Patent Examination Cooperation of the Patent Office of the State Intellectual Property Office, suggested that Chinese companies may wish to take advantage of their position in the downstream industry, close contact with customers, and familiarity with the current development of the domestic LED lighting market, and continue to develop new application areas of LED lighting technology through market-guided technology research and development, and quickly occupy this application area.