Nakamura, the Nobel Prize, and compensating inventors

With Shuji Nakamura sharing the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, it was foreseeable someone would bring up the patent award business. See for example One of the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Sold His Patent for the Discovery for $180 .

IPBiz has covered the story for some time. See the 2005 post
Nichia/Nakamura settle over blue LED , which includes the text


Separately, of the Shuji Nakamura/Nichia flap over patents to blue light emitting diodes [LEDs], please see http://nesr.esci-va.com/materials/gan/maruska_story.asp. [from Just The Facts, Ma'am, Intellectual Property Today, Jan. 2003 on the failure of RCA to capitalize on its work on the blue LED]



[Paul Maruska obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford, and overlapped in time with LBE.]

Of the mention of LEDs as light sources in the Slate article, note the text


Holonyak himself foresaw applications long before they materialized, predicting the use of light emitting diodes as useful light sources in the February 1963 issue of Reader's Digest. Harland Manchester, Light of Hope—Or Terror?, READER’S DIG., Feb. 1963, at 97, 100.



quoted from LBE, WHAT THE STORY OF THE INVENTION OF THE TRANSISTOR TEACHES US ABOUT 21ST CENTURY PATENT PRACTICE, 8 JMRIPL 80 (2008)