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Boston University tries to take a bite out of Apple over LED patent
By adamg on Wed, 07/03/2013 - 8:32am
Boston University, which has been busy filing patent lawsuits against high-tech companies in recent months, yesterday added Apple to its legal sights.
In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Boston, BU charges that the LEDs used in the iPhone 5, iPad and MacBook Air violate a patent it holds based on the work of Theodore Moustakas, one of its electrical engineering and computer science professors, for "growing" LED components out of gallium nitride.
BU wants lots of money in recompense and an order to stop Apple from selling devices with the allegedly offending LEDs.
In May, BU sued Amazon over the LEDs in its Kindles, two months after it sued Samsung over its LED light bulbs, which came three months after it sued companies you've never heard of that make LEDs.
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Comments
I wonder
Who funded the research that BU and the professor did on this?
I'm betting, if BU holds the patent, that it was federally funded (otherwise the private funder would be doing the suing).
Likely DARPA
The Pentagon was the biggest funder of this sort of research at the time and Dr. Moustakas was faculty in the Photonics Center which is largely funded by DARPA, DoD, and DoE. So, I'd bet it was DARPA money for the most part.
CSMonitor article from 1995
oh BU
Things must be really bad at BU these days if this seems like a good use of Larry Elswit's legal talents. The Photonics Center is a strange and creepy place.