Glass maker Schott AG plans to double its investments into its R&D and manufacturing facility based in Alzenau, Germany. The company has announced to move the headquarters of its solar business from Alzenau to the Schott group headquarters in Mainz. The move aims at freeing up space for expansion in Alzenau, said Marting Hemig, general manager of Schott AG subsidiary Schott Solar.

According to Numonyx employees, the memory spin-off from Intel and STMicroelectronics is to close its R&D center in Santa Clara, known as the California Technology Center (CTC). Continued price declines and weakening macro-economic climate is forcing Numonyx to restructure, forcing the company to close facilities and reduce its headcount. Employees at the CTC were told of the closure last Tuesday, which is believed to come into effect by April, 2009. According to the Numonyx sources,

As it did in Round One, Broadcom has prevailed in Round Two of a GPS patent dispute with SiRF Technology, as a US ITC (International Trade Commission) judge Friday ruled that SiRF products infringe six patents belonging to Global Locate, a wholly owned Broadcom subsidiary.

At Rubicon Technology’s recent 2Q08 earnings conference call with industry analysts, the company's president and CEO discussed the future of the LED market.

PhotonStar LED has increased the efficiency of its next-generation CeilingStar5 downlighter to 70 luminaire lumens per circuit watt.

As advances in light-emitting diode technology push it into the commercial realm, component distributors are retooling their operations to help rewire buildings to take advantage of its energy-saving capabilities.

Field Emission Technologies, a Japanese R&D firm spun out of Sony in 2006, announced that it is poised to mass produce 26-inch field-emission display (FED) panels by the end of 2009. Compared with other flat-panel technologies such as LCDs and plasma displays, FEDs have long been known for their superior performance, including higher contrast ratio, lower power consumption and wider viewing angle. Charles Spindt at SRI International developed the principles for FED technology in 1968.

...the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Canon had not broken its contract with Nano-Proprietary (now called Applied Nanotech Holdings) since Canon is now the sole owner of its previous joint venture with Toshiba, SED The court also reinstated Canon's license to the SED tech, but since Canon stopped working on the tech last year, it'll probably be a while before we see any SED displays actually show up.