Nichia Corporation

The Nichia Corporation (日亜化学工業株式会社, Nichia Kagaku Kōgyō Kabushiki-gaisha^?) is a Japanese chemical manufacturing company that is most widely known for producing phosphors. The founder was Nobuo Ogawa, who supported Shuji Nakamura to do research on gallium nitride light emitting diodes when it was generally considered a very risky business. It turned out to be a great success. However, the company achieved a certain amount of notoriety for a bonus of 20,000 Yen (-US$180) given to Shuji Nakamura for his invention of the first high brightness blue-light LED, which was based on gallium nitride. They later settled out of court with him for 840 million Yen (-US$7 million) in what was the highest bonus ever awarded by a Japanese company.