“In early March we posted a report titled ‘New Super Bright Nano-Dot Coatings for Sapphire Substrates came to light in Japan this Week,'” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“The report covered new ways that sapphire substrates could be used in next generation display backlights,” Purcher reports. “Our graphic [below] illustrates just how much brighter a display could be using sapphire as a key substrate while realizing lower power consumption. [Last week], the news of Apple acquiring LuxVue came to light. LuxVue is a specialist in micro-LED screen technologies. Venture Capitalist John Doer of KPCB described LuxVue’s technology a ‘technical breakthrough in displays.'”
Purcher reports, “Our report today provides technically savvy Apple fans with links to each of LuxVue’s 21 patents that are on record so that you could explore the technology that Apple has just acquired. One of the common elements that LuxVue shares with the bright display technology noted in our cover graphic is that both use of a sapphire substrate.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple acquires LuxVue, maker of power efficient micro-LED technology – May 2, 2014
Patents? Who can really protect them? By the nowadays out-of-the-loop judges and couldn’t-care-less consumers?
Clearly there is no longer any meaningful protection for patent holders in the US, but the particular patents from LuxVue involve displays using synthetic sapphire.
Apple is doing the smart thing by getting exclusive access to the large scale manufacture of synthetic sapphire. It won’t be available in large quantity to Samsung or anybody else.
You may recall that Apple tied up virtually all the automatic milling machines capable of being used to make unibody housings. No other manufacturer was able to mass produce equivalent housings for their products because there simply wasn’t sufficient spare capacity to do so anywhere in the world.
I think that Tim Cook has realised that when you’re facing a company that totally disregards patents, coupled with a US legal system that does not adequately protect patents, the only sure-fire way of manufacturing products which cannot be copied is to incorporate technology that can’t be bought off the shelf and can’t be realistically duplicated either. We’ve now seen this with unibody housings, 64 bit CPUs, together with other advanced silicon and now we’re seeing it with sapphire.
Apple can invest billions in sapphire production because it knows that it only needs to be able to make just one or two successful products incorporating sapphire, which will sell by the hundreds of millions, in order for it to be economically viable. Apple has confidence that it’s products are well thought out and are usually tremendously successful. A company like Samsung, who has more misses than hits, would be mad to risk spending such a large amount of money to manufacture advanced materials intended for just one or two products, which might not be very successful.
Obviously patents are worth the paper they’re written on.
The lawyers aren’t discouraging any patents…
This is NOT a software patent… So, in this case, it might work better going forward than interface/software patents
If Apple doubles the brightness of their Retina displays, they’ll be considered a blinding weapon. Who will need a Taser?
Or with this new tech (brighter display, lower power consumption), they could just maintain the brightness while significantly lowering the power consumption. I.E. Offsetting, or making room.
It was only a few weeks back that we were reading how sapphire reduces the brightness of a display thus meaning less bright or more power consumption. This seems to be saying the opposite. A week is a long time in technology clearly.