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Patents should have a timeout restriction. Blue LED's have been on the market for years! If she hasn't filed for patent infringement before now, she shouldn't be allowed to at all. I think a six month window is appropriate.

Note to self: Kill old lady with patent...

without LEDs I guess its back to the stone age for us....

I like the way they make your fingertips glow.

She had her chance to do this before. This is a prime example of trolling: Not saying a word until companies have a strong market presence, then take it to court.

Sorry, this should be thrown out. She chose not to do it when selling products with LED's in them, she shouldn't have the right to do so now.

She didn't protect her patent when they were infringing in. It's like this, you have a sign that says stay off the lawn. people come by and have a picnic on your front lawn, and don't complain. They come back for another picnic, you still don't complain, but this time, you come out and join them. The next time they come, they set up for a picnic, you finally call the cops and sue them for violating your privacy.

If any company fails to protect it's copyrights, then they should have no recourse when they finally decide they've had enough.

In this case, she waited until the market was overwhelmed with Blue/Violet LEDs, then she decides to extract money for copyright infringement....there is no excuse for the length of time she waited, she could have started this when they first started to appear.

I don't know about anyone else, but to me it almost sounds like she managed to patent the color blue with it's short wavelength or at the very least, managed to take technology developed by other people and patent it herself. Unless her discoveries came before 1971 (judging by Wiki and the creator of the first blue LED, Jacques Pankove), I can't see how she could patent it. Then again, without reading her patent and knowing the circumstances, it's hard to say, but I personally feel like it's a ridiculous dispute.

If she truly invented the patent, then she deserves the benefits of it for the extent of the patent. Having said that, she's opposing the infringement a little too late in the game for it not to be an attempt at gaining as much money as possible.

Gertrude Neumark Rothschild I wonder if she is any relation to the Rothschild family who made there money out of misinfomation about the Napoleonic war, then cleaned up on the stock market when it crashed because everyone thought Napoleon had won. I think it was Waterloo.
Seems like the blag this old dear is trying to pull.

Patents FTL.

It's a good thing we have patent law to protect us from the advancement of science and the useful arts.

Just pay the lady already! If you were involved in the creation of a technology you'd want to get paid too.

It's pretty obvious her retirement fund ran out, and she doesn't want to work at a Wal-Mart

She deserves a fair chance if she worked on this technology before the other big RICH corporations! Its good for the consumers because they will be forced push some other technology, maybe flash memory based media!

I see that everyone is jumping on this INVENTOR as a troll. However, we have no idea what kind of correspondence or communication had been made prior to this lawsuit. Cut the small guy a break. Sony will still have YEARS to attempt to gouge all the rest of us now that the format war is over.

This will never go through or at least it will get settled out of court. Sony and all those manufacturers won't let it happen. If the slight possibility it does, Microsoft will be in the clear since they did put a high def drive in the 360.

There's no reason to think anything is going to happen to imports. The article says "United States International Trade Commission (USITC) has begun an investigation into a list of companies that reads like a Who's Who in the modern electronics industry." The reason for the investigation is that due to the nature of the patents it's impossible to find out whether the patents are even being infringed without an investigation, since they cover manufacturing techniques, not the finished product.
Also, not everyone wants some ridiculous amount of money. This will probably just be settled out of court like every time before, once it's determined whether or not the patents are even being infringed. She might only want a few million dollars between all of them. I know if I held a patent like this I'd be satisfied with not much more than enough to retire on.

Lots of misinformed comments here. Rothschild is not some evil patent troll. She is a hero(ine).
Rothschild DID NOT INVENT BLUE LED's... she invented a process for turning low quality semiconductor substrate into high quality material suitable for a range of electronics.
She invented these techniques in the 1970's and 80's based on her research from the 60's onwards. She owns valid patents filed in the 1980's, way before anyone had even thought about widespread use of laser diodes.
She filed against the manufacturers as soon as they started ripping her off years ago - they used her techniques to turn ***** into gold to make more profit out of us schmucks. The manufacturers have had her stitched up tight by their lawyers for years.
Last year she had an appeal upheld, which means that she is now free to sue them properly once and for all. Which is no doubt why Philips quickly settled out of court. Expect the others to follow suit.
This very clever, bullied old lady is rightly about to become one of the richest people on the planet if their is any real justice.

Okay, I'm all for the whole "and justice for all" thing but I like my high-definition movies thank you very much. Sony should hire someone to "fix" her water supply >.>

settle for 1 mill apiece form each company

Doesn't bother me. I don't live in a country where every little daily decision in life has to be run past a team of lawyers.

I guess that wont effect expanding my HD collection.... darn forgot that ugliness. I guess I got to pay the lady for my LEDs

From the reading I've done it looks like this lady may have a legitimate claim of patent infringement. It does happen. The problem is that now that the patent trolls have become so common it is easy to write off all patent infringement cases as such.

BS patent here. That's only a few (one?) fool company that have settled. Nothing of substance taught. That's why all companies have laughed this one off. Challenge is a big mistake. It will be buried once and for all. As it should be. Bad science should not be rewarded, and it won't be. The patent system will work as it should to protect legitimate invention and void fraudulent challenges.

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