LED lighting company and long-time FTS member Valoya has recently announced its new Spectrum Technology Licensing Program. Our Vice Chair Nicole Thorpe sat down with Valoya CEO Lars Aikala to find out more about this and their other activities and experiences.
FTS: Hi Lars, and thanks for talking with us. As a long-time leader in the CEA industry, we’re very pleased to have this opportunity to highlight your knowledge and experience in this interview. So please introduce yourself to the audience, perhaps also with some information about your background:
Valoya: Thanks Nicole for talking to me! I am one of the founders and the CEO of Valoya since we started in 2009. Before that I worked with environmental technologies in different management positions, with the main purpose of growing the businesses through partnerships, acquisitions or other strategic projects.
One of the things that inspired me from that time and to get into LEDs and to start Valoya was the expectation of clearly quantifiable benefits, mainly energy savings. A few years into Valoya, we realized that things are much more complex and energy savings is only one of many ways we can provide value to growers. The ability to impact plant yields with light proved more valuable, even if it is not as straightforward to quantify.
FTS: So, tell us a bit more about your Spectrum Technology Licensing Program. What made Valoya decide to pursue this way forward and what advantages does it offer you over more traditional strategies? Are there any disadvantages?
Valoya: The licensing program is a result of many things and many years of development. From the start we wanted to systematically protect our innovations and inventions and we took an active approach to patents. We also explored a wider range of ideas and trials in our plant-light research from the very start. So we saw and uncovered some very interesting things, which turned into inventions and patents. The licensing program enables us to share some of our know-how, through IP to other companies, where there is no conflict with our own business ambitions. We do not see any disadvantages with this strategy and I think we can work with interested parties to keep it mutually beneficial in the future too.
FTS: Intellectual Property (IP) is a complex and somewhat contentious issue within the CEA industry (as in any other emerging industry). Presumably this program seeks to take your knowledge and expertise and balance the need for cooperation and the sharing with others in the marketplace, with the need to protect and create competitive economic value?
Valoya: Yes….Our angle to this comes more from the LED side of things. There are a lot of patents in the LED field and to have our own patent portfolio makes us a more capable player here. I think perhaps the concerns in the CEA are a bit different than on the LED tech side, but as I am not too familiar with the CEA side patent issues, I cannot really say.
FTS: This licensing program is the result and product of an extensive history of plant trials and experimenting. How important was it for Valoya to have done these trials prior to launching this program, and why?
Valoya: Our research, way-of-life, evolved in parallel with our active IP strategy. They were not linked, but certainly the innovative way of doing things and freedom to experiment and try, even odd, ideas in our research has nurtured an environment where inventions can happen. Today research is the basis of our light and products and it secures well functioning light solutions for our customers. The patent portfolio is a testament to our innovation too.
FTS: Valoya holds a large number of patents in LED lighting. What are your thoughts on the value of the patent system in such a fast moving and innovative industry? Are there systemic improvements that could and/or should be made?
Valoya: It is not for me to make suggestions on the system itself. There are more competent people for that. I think I can say to anyone thinking of filing a patent or patents, to carefully consider what they want to achieve with it and to try to understand how much money it will require, how much time it will take to achieve the goals. We filed our first patent about 11 years ago, and only recently have we seen concrete possibilities to integrate this into our business (ie not only costs, but seeing some income too through our licensing program).
FOR VALOYA
LARS AIKALA - CEO
We want you, our readers, to know more about who our members are and what they’re doing. So we put together the FTS finds out more series, to do just that!
——–
