Patents

[Mush]

Bear in mind that the LED Alliance site is likely to display some bias! Interesting, nonetheless, but remember which side they're on.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Struggling to find any mention of it on :

 

http://www.colorkinetics.com/

 

(edited) Don`t know if many companies have `ongoing litigation` section on their wesites admittedly.

 

Thogh CK do attract a lot of investment on the strength of the markets appetite for `Patented` product and methods.

 

Not forgetting letters page of LSi this month with the `patent` kerfuffle with using more than RGB for colour mixing.

 

7 Colour from selador:

 

http://www.selador.net

 

Which is using full range of coloured Luxeon LEDs from Lumileds, that have been around for a couple of years now:

 

http://www.lumileds.com

 

Newer brighter Luxeons are promised for Summer, competition is growing in high power LEDs:

 

http://www.cree.com

 

and others, notably the Chinese with Luxeon clone LEDs, may be why Lumileds is talking about Patents loudly.

 

New CK royalty free LED control announced:

 

http://www.strandarchive.co.uk/control/c_directoperated/j8.jpg

 

YMMV

 

Image from www.strandarchive.co.uk

[droog]

So let's see if I've got this right, if I want to develop a 16.7 million colour light source by PWM dimming a string of red, green and blue LEDs (I actually fancy the 20 Watt Lamina Ceramics for this!) using the colour physics of Newton, the DMX512 protocol developed in 1986 by the USITT and the micro-controller skills picked up in college - I would need to pay CK a ransom if I wanted to produce it commercially?

 

:blink:

 

This can't be right.

 

 

Can it?

[LDODD]

Thats about the guts of it....

 

You're also stuffed with anything in white, warm white, or mixing thereof.

 

Ever been to a breakfast meeting, where 5 Lawyers turn up unannounced with interesting documents for you?

 

Look at PAM (Pulse Amplitude Modulation) dimming, though it's not as smooth by all accounts.

It's also Patented, but to a more reasonnable extent.

[dbuckley]

There are some direct parralels with LED technology as movers.

 

CK come after anyone who use the words DMX and PWM anywhere near each other.

 

Vari*Lite held an equally good set of patents on movers, including a patent that would have prevented anyone making a mover with DMX control, but the announced publicly that they would not persue that patent. Thus a whole universe (groan) of DMX controlled movery type things were invented, and look where we are today. VL could have squashed everyone with the DMX patent, but chose not to.

 

Its somewhat sad that KC aren't so sure of themselves that they cant stand a bit of competition.

[ben.suffolk]

Look at PAM (Pulse Amplitude Modulation) dimming, though it's not as smooth by all accounts.

It's also Patented, but to a more reasonnable extent.

 

 

More to the point look at BAM (Bit Angle Modulation). Invented by Artistic License, its (according to them) the most efficient way to do colour control of LEDs without flicker and much less processor power.

 

I'm sure I read a different white paper on it by them that said you were free to use it, but I can't seem to find that right now, so don't guarantee it.

 

Ben