Tokyo, Japan, April 23, 2004--Nichia Corporation and Sony Corporation have come to an agreement on the cross licensing of blue-violet laser-diode (LD)-related patents for optical-disc use. In December 2002, Nichia and Sony began collaborating on the development of blue-violet LDs as well as building up an environment to share the usage of the related technologies possessed by the two companies in order to accelerate demand for blue-violet LDs. Nichia and Sony have also been collaborating on blue-violet LD developments specifically for optical-disc recording and playback.

The cross-licensing agreement will enable usage of all related patents on blue-violet LDs, with no time limit, for optical-disc recording and playback. Collectively, there are approximately 800 patent applications in total filed by both companies. The 405-nm-wavelength LD is vital to the Blu-ray disc system, which enables digital recording of high-definition (HD) content such as movies in consumer use, as well as in professional XDCAM disc systems.

(Note: Blu-Ray is one of two mutually incompatible blue-laser DVD formats being developed by the consumer electronics indistry; the other is HD-DVD. While Blu-Ray boosts capacity primarily with more-advanced optoelectronic technology, HD-DVD relies more on advanced signal compression. Whether one format will eventually win out entirely, or whether both formats will find niches for different uses or in different parts of the world, no one can yet predict.)

In addition to Nichia, which is commercially farthest along on a worldwide basis as a supplier of blue-violet LDs, Sony will also mass-produce and supply blue-violet LDs, with the intent of building a stable environment for the supply of blue-violet LDs for optical-disc use.

The two companies expect that the convergence of their technologies will lead to lower LD costs by improving production efficiency, and will also lead to higher-performance high-level-output blue-violet LDs. Results of the joint developments made so far have already been implemented in mass production by both companies; mass-production shipments by Nichia and partial shipment of evaluation samples to other companies by Sony are under process. Nichia and Sony will continue to collaborate in technology development.

Fri Apr 23 07:38:00 CDT 2004