Overall strategic approach

LightLab is strategically positioned with its presence in Taiwan and has well-established contacts and networks in the Far East. The intention is to build on this position and to establish partnerships with strong brands and companies that are active in research, development, production and distribution. An early launch together with a partner must be based on an application where the requirements for the product are similar to the present level of technology. LightLab intends to use existing structures, operators and brands in the market to ensure rapid deployment and market penetration at a low cost to the company.

Patent strategy

LightLab's patent strategy is designed to protect all the critical technologies and methods in key markets such as the United States (US), China (CN) and Europe (EP). LightLab owns a total of 22 patents and 19 patent applications spread over 12 different patent families. In addition to its own patent protection the strategy includes continuous monitoring of competing technologies.

Market strategy

LightLab has achieved a very high energy efficiency without the use of mercury and other heavy metals. As the lamp electronics have not yet been miniaturised to a socket format, it is our assessment that a suitable initial niche are applications where electronics are fitting based, such as industrial applications. The lamp's good light reproduction properties with stable Ra-values above 90, indicate a competitive performance compared to both energy saving and LED lights, both of which regularly show lower values.

When the electronics have been finally adapted to suit a lamp socket with maximum efficiency at all conceivable light temperatures on the market, more resources will gradually be devoted to LightLab's technology to meet the demands from the consumer market. Activities to identify and procure potential partners for the distribution and other market-related collaborations are continually in progress. In order to speed up the pace of this processing, we will be strengthening the organisation with additional human resources in business development when the time is right.

Development strategy

LightLab researches and develops products based on field emission. The actual technology is well known although the lighting application is fairly new. This means that no fundamental barriers exist although a large number of technical challenges must be addressed.

The development project includes several key elements: luminosity, energy efficiency, light characteristics and service life. In addition there are properties like ignition time and temperature dependence, etc. LightLab has achieved the ambitious targets that have been set in most of these areas.

During the course of the development project, applications have been identified for the technology in areas other than lighting and in some cases verified. Each of these has significant potential. However, in order to drive development and prepare the lamp technology for production, substantial resources will be needed. Consequently, existing resources will be concentrated on the lighting application for the foreseeable future. However, other applications will be safeguarded by patents wherever feasible, and possible future collaborations are being prepared. To develop and adapt LightLab's lighting technology for large-scale production, the aim is to achieve this through partnerships with established operators. The previously reached agreement with Teco Nanotech in Taiwan represents a first step in this process.