5 Things to Know: August 16

Lighting Associates Inc. (LAI), the leading lighting sales agency in the Atlanta market, has a new leader at the helm. Russ Walter, a longtime principal at LAI, has officially stepped into the role of President and CEO following the retirement of industry veteran Doug Bogue on July 31.

LAI’s leadership handoff: Russ Walter (left) steps in as President & CEO as Doug Bogue (center) retires. Pictured with Al Uszynski (right) of Inside Lighting.

Bogue led LAI for over two decades, helping grow the agency into the 58-person leader it is today, supported by a strong line card that includes Acuity as a cornerstone partner. Before his agency career, Bogue played football at Georgia Tech and worked for Acuity early on, bringing field experience, competitive spirit and manufacturer perspective to his leadership.

The leadership transition remained in the background Thursday night as LAI hosted its annual “Battle of the Backhands” customer event at Painted Pickle in West Midtown. A few hundred lighting people turned out for the shindig, which featured food, drinks, and exhibits from roughly 17 manufacturers.

But the real action? On the nearby indoor pickleball courts, teams from local design firms and developers faced off in friendly competition. The championship match saw Newcomb & Boyd triumph over Gensler, with the winning duo of Colby Redding (in blue) and Stephen Callaway (in red) claiming victory for their firm.

A Philadelphia LED streetlighting upgrade is drawing fresh attention from local media and residents, as brighter streetscapes trigger mixed reactions. Launched in 2023, the city’s effort to replace 130,000 streetlights is well underway, with nearly 90,000 fixtures supplied by Acuity Brands’ American Electric Lighting — most featuring the company’s AutoConnect platform, which is coming in handy.

As reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, the project delivers significant energy savings and enables remote lighting management, but public feedback has centered on light spill and perceived over-lighting in residential areas. According to city officials, fixture brightness is being calibrated using neighborhood-level data on gun violence and traffic incidents. An early study from the University of Pennsylvania reported a 21% drop in nighttime outdoor gun crimes following LED installations.

Still, for residents impacted by spill light, the system’s adaptive controls are proving useful. According to The Inquirer, residents have been able to request dimming adjustments through the city’s 311 system or a dedicated email, using the remote control capabilities provided by the AutoConnect-equipped fixtures

Sometimes we go weeks without hearing much from the legal trenches. Other times, the docket lights up. This month is the latter. And while Inside Lighting has no interest in flooding the front page with a string of intellectual property headlines, some stories still warrant attention — not because of the patent claims themselves, but because of what unravels around them.

One such case: Signify’s suit against Liton. Filed in May, it alleged patent infringement related to lighting technology. On paper, it looked like another standard-issue IP dispute. But things took a turn behind the scenes — fast.

Three days before the case settled, Liton’s legal team at Vedder Price filed a motion to withdraw, citing an “irreconcilable dispute” that made continued representation “impossible.” Court documents revealed that Liton had already begun searching for new counsel. The motion also noted that the company had recently entered direct settlement talks with Signify, without its lawyers present — a rare move in federal IP litigation.

Those talks quickly bore fruit. On August 12, the parties reached a settlement in principle during an in-person meeting. By August 15, the court had dismissed the case entirely.

We’re not here to glamorize every ceasefire in patent land. But when an attorney jumps ship midstream and the client cuts a solo deal days later, it’s worth a footnote at least.

In 2022, Insteon vanished. No notice, no warning — just red-ringed hubs, silenced servers, and a million users left in the dark. It was a high-profile failure of a once-pioneering smart lighting platform, and it raised real questions about the fragility of cloud-dependent ecosystems.

But as The Verge explored in a recent podcast interview, the story didn’t end there. Ken Fairbanks, a former GM and devoted Insteon user, quietly acquired the company’s assets through bankruptcy and reassembled its core engineering team. Within weeks, he had restored cloud services and brought dormant systems back online.

To prevent a repeat collapse, Fairbanks introduced a $39 annual subscription — a shift away from the unsustainable “free app forever” model. Renewal rates remain strong, thanks in part to unusually open leadership. He’s hosted Zoom Q&As, personally returned customer calls, and treated transparency as a business strategy.

The company is now rebuilding slowly, navigating manufacturing delays and restoring its 100+ SKU catalog. Fairbanks also weighed in on Matter during the interview, calling it a “lowest common denominator” protocol. Insteon will integrate where it helps, but stick to its proprietary strengths.

Benchmark Electronics has added a heavyweight to its boardroom. Charles “Chuck” Swoboda — the former CEO and chairman of Cree, Inc., and a pivotal force in making LED lighting mainstream — has joined the board of directors.

Swoboda helped drive the LED lighting revolution from the front lines. He joined Cree in the 1990s when it was a $6 million R&D outfit and left it a $1.6 billion global player. Under his leadership, Cree rolled out thousands of products and secured more than 5,000 patents.

Benchmark says his role aligns with their strategy to scale advanced technology. But for many in the lighting community, the name Swoboda still carries weight not because of market cap — but because he’s one of the rare execs who pushed real innovation and saw it through.

He’s also written The Innovator’s Spirit and now serves as Innovator-in-Residence at Marquette University.