Author: Huang Ying

Garceran, the chief intellectual property consultant of Cree in the United States, recently introduced at a hearing on improving patent quality held by the Senate that during his sixteen years at Cree, he led Cree to develop the number of patents from 270 to 2,500. He believed that patents played a vital role in Cree's success and that Cree relied heavily on patents to protect its innovation. This is especially true on third-generation semiconductors.

On June 22, the U.S. Senate held a hearing on "Improving Patent Quality to Protect Real Innovation," inviting four representatives from business, academia, and law firms to listen to testimonies on how to improve the quality of U.S. patents. For details, see "U.S. Senate Holds Hearing on Improving Patent Quality."

As a representative of the two companies present, Cree of the United States made suggestions on the impact of patents on Cree's business and the need for higher-quality patent protection in the U.S. patent system. From this, we can see how Cree, a company born out of university technology transfer, has grown into the king of third-generation semiconductor materials.

In 1987, Cree was still a start-up company at North Carolina State University. With the credit support of friends and family, and the patent support of North Carolina State University, Cree created an American successful accident.

Cree's business covers LED epitaxy, chips, packaging, LED lighting solutions, compound semiconductors, power devices and radio frequency.

At the beginning of this year, Cree announced that it would officially change its name to Wolf speed at the end of 2021. Currently, Wolfspeed is the power and radio frequency division of Cree. This also means that Cree will focus on developing Wolfspeed’s current business after selling off its LED chips, components and LED lighting business in the past three years. Wolfspeed's business involves SiC materials, radio frequency, inverters and other key components in the energy, electric vehicles, military, and aerospace fields. It has leading patented technologies in SiC wafer substrate manufacturing and SiC wafer substrate manufacturing for radio frequency RF devices and single crystal GaN layers.

 

How important is this field to the United States?

In 2016, another RF giant, Infineon of Germany, proposed to acquire Wolfspeeed for 740 million euros, but it had to be terminated because the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFUIS) believed that the transaction would pose risks to U.S. national security.

Unexpectedly, in 2018, Cree acquired Infineon's RF business for 345 million euros, further strengthening Cree's global leading position in this regard.

Currently, Cree is leading the transition from traditional silicon to more energy-efficient and durable SiC, which is critical for the United States to lead the world in promoting high-growth technologies such as electric vehicles and 5G wireless infrastructure. Garceran believes Cree's patents will help the United States take the lead in these important technologies.

The point Garceran mentioned is very important for the concept of intellectual property in the third-generation semiconductor field.He believes that Cree relies heavily on patents to protect its innovations, unlike some companies that rely on other mechanisms (note: guesstimates such as technical secrets, etc.) to protect their technological influence.Because once products are sold on the market, potential competitors can reverse engineer these products and quickly copy their innovative structures and functions. Cree's patent is intended to prevent such behavior.

Therefore, he told the senators at the meeting that Cree very much needs a strong patent system to protect its innovations from those who are unwilling to invest the huge resources required to stay at the forefront of technology.

This should be a good inspiration to China’s third-generation semiconductor companies and scientific research institutions. That is, in this field, patents play an irreplaceable role in innovation and protection. If you do not apply for patents and rely solely on technical secrets, you can no longer keep up with the times.. Therefore, will there be a patent competition in the third-generation semiconductor industry in the future? At present, it is very possible. You can see it by looking at Cree's 10-fold increase in patents in more than ten years.

Currently, under Garceran's leadership, Cree continues to maintain its leadership in SiC and GaN, continues to invest in research and development, and protects innovation through patents. As of December 7, 2020, Cree’s patent assets include:

665 U.S. patents;

1,438 foreign patents;

182 U.S. applications pending;

264 foreign applications are under review.
 

and launched"Material Products", "Power Products", "RF Products"Three major categories of external licensing projects, as well as those that have been sold"LED components and chip products"external permission.

 

Material Product License Patent List

  RF Product Licensed Patent List  

At the Senate hearing, Garceran told Cree that it is very important to improve the quality of U.S. patents, and mentioned two impacts of low-quality patents:First, low-quality patents will harm business.（Low-Quality Patents Hurt Business）；Second, low-quality patents have caused an uncertain business environment.（Low Quality Patents Create an Uncertain Business Environment）。

He then put forward three suggestions for improving patent quality. For details, see "U.S. Senate Hearing on Improving Patent Quality" or the Chinese translation of the testimony at the end of the article. From Garceran’s statement, we can see that Cree is a typical American company with core technologies that places the importance of patents at a very high level and will continue to strengthen the application and protection of intellectual property rights. This will definitely bring certain obstacles to my country's independent development of third-generation semiconductors. However, Chinese companies can effectively organize innovative research, understand or penetrate the patent layout of international giants such as Cree, and form more independent technology patents. This will help China win the confidence to compete with the United States in core technologies in key fields such as 5G and electric vehicles.  
Chinese translation of Cree’s speech at the Senate hearing (AI translation):
  Note: If you need Cree patent or licensing, please contact the backend.    

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