Cree and Epistar sign major LED patent cross-licensing agreement

LED manufacturers Cree and Taiwan-based Epistar have announced a global intellectual property (IP) cross-licensing agreement covering all nitride-based-LED patents owned by each and some non-nitride-based patents as well. The companies revealed little of the details of the agreement other than stating that Epistar will pay Cree a licensing fee and royalty payments over the term of the agreement.

Cree and Epistar are competitors, although not directly so. Cree manufactures the bulk of its LED chips and packages the chips for sale to solid-state lighting (SSL) product developers. Epistar is focused more purely on chips and sells those to LED manufacturers that don’t own chip manufacturing lines and to some SSL manufacturers that can work with the unpackaged die.