January 27, 2022
5 Things to Know: Week Ending January 28
A guide to lighting offices, which includes hybrid & home offices. Plus, a jury renders a verdict in lighting lawsuit.
Here's a roundup of some of the week's happenings curated to help lighting people stay informed.
1. Signify announces 2022 results
On Friday, Signify reported its financial results for 2022 that were reflective of its preemptive commentary about lower-than-expected sales that was previously issued this month. The company generated €7.5 billion ($8.16 billion USD) in 2022 revenues.
Signify said that its 2023 profits should improve versus 2022, but did not give an outlook on 2023 revenue citing market volatility.
We will publish more Signify analysis on Monday.
See Signify's full financial report »
2. A guide to lighting offices
The UK's Society of Light and Lighting (SLL) has launched the latest Lighting Guide 07 (LG7): Offices. There have been considerable developments since the previous edition, published in 2015.
The new guide considers hybrid working, addressing uncertainty around how office space will be used in the future. With increased hybrid working and the use of portable devices, people are spending less time at their desks and in the office. This revision of Lighting Guide 7 now includes home office lighting advice.
3. Agency acquisition: Southeast electrical/lighting reps
Tennessee-based Electrical Sales Associates has acquired Georgia-based KAM Sales. KAM Sales is a stocking manufacturers’ representative agency that operates in Georgia, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle.
ESA represents Halco Lighting, Light Efficient Design, Utopia Lighting and Southwire – along with numerous other electrical manufacturers. The KAM acquisition bolsters its Georgia presence with several additional electrical lines including American Fittings, Federal Pacific and Shamrock.
4. Apparent Plagiarism: EdisonReport does it again
One week after publishing an article that was entirely copied word-for-word from Boston.com, EdisonReport has seemingly plagiarized another article this week. On Tuesday, Law360 reported on the resolution of the 2020 Nichia vs. Feit lawsuit. EdisonReport published a short Nichia/Feit article on Thursday and seems to have taken all of its sentences and phrases from Law360's copyrighted article without giving any credit or attribution.
Law360 has informed us that (1) most of its content sits behind a paywall (2) all of its content is copyrighted and (3) it typically doesn't permit other publications to republish its content, and wouldn’t do so without requiring proper attribution.
EdisonReport has a history of demanding credit (IN ALL CAPS) for publishing news already in the public domain or already published by inside.lighting, but apparently isn't as disciplined in publishing its own content or giving credit when entire articles are derived from the copyrighted work of other publications.
5. Jury reaches verdict in Nichia vs. Feit lawsuit
As first reported by Law360, a 2020 lawsuit, Nichia Corporation v. Feit Electric Company, Inc., is seemingly on its way to being dismissed after a jury reached a verdict last week that Feit Electric did not infringe the U.S. Patent No. 9,752,734 held by Nichia.
Nichia accused Feit of making numerous LED lamps that violated Nichia’s intellectual property relating to LED boards, chips, mounting and wiring. Nichia may choose to appeal the verdict, but haven't yet filed an appeal with the court.
