Bad news for solaris owners
 

PFO is being sued for patent infringment. I have been trying to call them for two weeks to get repalement parts, but apparently they laid off all their staff. Anyone know how to get repalcement parts now?

Good thing these lights were cheap .!.!...

What kind of parts are you looking for?

light strips, do you know where to find them??

So this lawsuit is only related to their LED products?

Is that why J&L has the solaris on sale? :p

I think it only relates to the aquarium lighting, but the lawsuit seems to be crippling the company. They laid off all their staff, even in the commercial lighting section.

May still survive, but it doesn't look good.

If you're interested there is a thread on Reef Central titled "Interesting Solaris Info"
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5&pagenumber=1

If your looking for parts maybe I will sell you mine :wink:

Talk about a brutal deal (J&L sale) for anyone not in the know.

.

As bad as this sounds, with the exception of a few places, this hobby is very rarely blessed with ethical buisness people

J&L solaris lights have been on sale a long time. the sale was started on them because people were finding that LED lighting was not as good (or just as good... PAR comparison results are still unconfirmed i believe) as say metal halides and were far more expensive. the current patent issue with the LEDs and PFO was not the initial cause of the sale... just thought that should be stated.

Man just read through the actual lawsuit and you would be crazy to buy any LED aquarium lights at this point but especially the PFO units (even on sale)! Orbital Technologies Corporation has the patent to any and all LED lights made for marine aquarium use. There is no way PFO can win this lawsuit and just does not have the money to fight a corporation with $150 million in contrcts...these guys are not another relatively small aquarium company.

I feel bad for everyone who spent all that money on these things because up until now, they have been nothing but trouble and now the warranty will most likely not be valid :(

http://www.reefbuilders.com/wp-conte...p-o08-220p.pdf

Anyone want to buy a 72" solaris light :lol:

Any suggestions on what to go with for a new light?

So is your solaris not working anymore? Man that really sucks :(

I really do feel bad for you and everyone who is being screwed over by this. I almost bought one last year but ended up deciding to wait until more of the bugs were worked out. Now I am glad I did but at the same time, its sad to think this technology may never be used again. Its now up to one company if they ever want to reintroduce it to the market and they are NOT an aquarium company. Really too bad...

It still works. I just dont want to have to wait for a new one to ship once the lights inevitably burn out or there is some other problem. If the light cant be maitained its not much use to me, its just a ticking time bomb.

Solaris
 

Just checked jl aquatics web site, solaris is not even on the site anymore.

I certainly don't think that Marine LED's are a dead issue. Although I completely disagree with Orbitec's attempt to control the market, they themselves say that they will be introducing something with a main-stream aquarium supplier later this year.

I also don't know whether their patent is really much to worry about except for Solaris owners...it's very specific to LED's with controllable spectrums...unfortunately, this is the main feature in many of the Solaris products. Looking at the timing of patent applications and such suggests that PFO knew that they were treading a thin line. It's a shame to see them go down like this as they were a strong domestic supplier that you could count on for good products.

HA...
I was on JL's site this morning and they were still advertising their solaris sale...
Not saying anything subversive but kind of coincidental to this thread aint it?

Maybe they just found out about the lawsuit too....lol

Yeah, J&L totally removed the solaris from their site. It was just up on the mian page yesterday when I was window shopping.

No disrespect to J&L at all, I really like them. I just brought it up because I saw the sale for the first time a bit ago and thought that it would be cool to get a solaris. I've seen one running at Wai's and it is a really neat unit.

Well said Justin. It's important not to careless imply a lack of ethics or honesty against any person/business without any proof thereof, especially on a large public forum. That itself could lead to lawsuits.

yes.
the onus is on the consumer to prove dishonesty.
Just accept it all at face value...lol

It's one thing to outright make slanderous accusations, it's quite another to ask questions.

Believe me, I shop at JL a lot and am happy to give them my business, but at the end of the day thats all it is.
Business.

I believe in coincidences.
Sometimes.

I'm not slamming the company from what I haer they are a great company.

In my opininon the ethical thing for any buissiness to do when selling these lights is to tell people whats going on with the company before they drop major cash on something that may not have warranty anymore.

I think they did the right thing by pulling it off their site.

I wasn't implying anything by saying it was a crap deal for buyers of the remaining J&L stock. Tho when I posted that today it was still on their front page and now is gone. For whatever reason that occured it's good that nobody will unknowingly buy OR sell these doomed lights.

This whole ordeal blows my mind. Feel so bad for the early adopters of what could have been a promising thing.

The patent is absurdly broad...basically any LED illumination system over a marine environment that will produce growth. Orbitec filed for the patent in 2004 and PFO should have known this...as you say they were really walking a thin line and if people want to blame anyone, it shoudl be PFO, NOT J&L or any other reputable shop.

Just thought I would mention though that the patent is not nearly as specific as you say...should not cover moonlights though :D

http://www.google.com/patents?id=mwW...um+LED+orbital

I've ordered from J&L many times, and have no problem with the company (although it may have seemed that way in my previous post)

I would like to hope that JL merely took them down to avoid any legal issues on their end, but *meh*.

It's a shame you might be stuck with a bum unit though Frenchie. LEDs look great, but for me at least, are more money than they are worth. I'll stick to MH or T5...

as I understand it, it's also largely to do with the way solaris is mounted to the tank...
meaning hanging fixtures might be exempt as well.
RC has a tonne of posts about this now, more all the time, even some patent lawyers piping in there.

If you read the patent, you will find not much mentioned about mounting. More about illumination of marine aquariums with LED lighting. As I said above, its very broad.

In looking at the patent further...and in reading some of the responses that Orbitec has provided people who inquire, the patent lawsuit against PFO is more aimed at at the similarities between the Solaris product and the patented product. Though their claim on LED's over a marine aquarium sounds broad, I believe they would lose a claim which was singularly based upon that broad statement. As exemplified by so many people pointing out that such a product instead be sold strictly for "freshwater" aquariums. In this case they are targeting the product itself which has a controller that adjusts the spectrum of the lighting (the main benefit of LED of course). Notice that similar lawsuits have not been filed against some of the other LED products out there.

read the very first thing in the patent.
Number 1.
It refers to the way the fixture relates to the open top of the aquarium.
maybe you missed it, it's a little convoluted.
it's a little clearer if you click on the pdf image int he top left of that link you posted greenspot, go tp page 8, starting about line 27.

I have read that some of the issues with the patent are due to the similarities of the soalris design with this aspect of the patent.

Yes I missed that. Makes more sense now.

I just hope they do indeed continue to advance this technology as its something I was really hoping to try this year. Perhaps they can do a much better job too than PFO had done. The PFO fixtures left a lot to be desired. I have even heard of stories where the fixture arrived with rivets popping out. Seems the whole fixture was really poorly made (even after moving production to the US) which is too bad because the idea and technology are something that could really advance this hobby.

not bothering to read the patent but what's so unique about putting a light fixture full of LED over a marine tank that it would be patentable?

How do you adjust the spectrum ? if you have a 6500K cool white LED how do you change that ?

or is it in increasing the intensity of some lets say blue LED's while decreasing the intensity of lets say whites ( or vice versa ) that allows this shift in spectrum ?

O_o
I had no idea until now that anyone was having problems with the Solaris. I've had mine for over two years now... no problems with it.
I have to take it apart every six months or so and blow the dust out, but that's about it...
Maybe it's because my tank is covered, so the moisture can't get in and corrupt the circuitry?

I think if this is all true somebody should tell PFO, see Solaris is still up on their site http://www.pfolighting.com/pfoaquatics/SolarisMain.aspx

Well thats the thing. Anything is patentable. Any idea can be retained as intellectual property no matter how broad or absurd but the chance of solely keeping that "idea" without ever producing/manufacturing a product is slim to none. In this case the patent was applied for in 2004 and granted in 2007. In the meantime, PFO shipped they're first fixtures in 2006. So although they were selling this technology before any patent went through, they knew this could happen and this is 100% they're fault. Bad business IMO. Whether right or wrong, another company had a patent pending on this technology and PFO took a huge risk--either blowing off US patent laws or assuming the patent may not go through. They did apply for patent on they're fixtures/technology in 2006 and it has yet to be approved. Most likely will not be after all this mess.

Now if the patent holder had no intention of producing LED lights sold for marine aquarium growth, PFO would most likely have ended up getting their patent granted. Basically if you have a patent but do not act on it within 2-3 years and other companies DO produce similar products, the producing company will be allowed to patent their products. There is a lot more to it including often still paying the original patent company a percentage but thats kind of off topic.

PFO did try to sell the Solaris division of they're company to the new patent holder but they were not interested and filed the lawsuit instead. My feeling is this is just to stop them from selling anymore LED fixtures and ultimately put PFO under. Again, PFO took a huge risk when put they're entire company into one product that was already under patent pending. They really have no to blame but themselves.

Well they fired almost everyone, so...maybe no one is there to update the site :neutral:

I'm glad J&L took them down. This lawsuit has been pending for some time and lots of industry insiders knew about it long before Reef Builders and Glassbox posted about it on their blogs. I was tempted to email J&L when they posted their most recent sale to question them about the timing of the sale given PFO is seemingly going to go belly up leaving consumers without any support. Additionally, retailers in the US were removing these lights and discontinuing sales starting nearly two weeks ago. I thought it was funny that the J&L sale was a mere 10% off for a light that was knowingly having such huge difficulties.

Quite a while ago I bought a m.h. coralife product and was not aware of the nightmare
that would follow. It was according to my dad a piece of crap. I was a little scared of
it to begin with. But once I got it I found some problems with the bulbs not fitting. I
phoned the people who sold it to me, many times and finally was told to talk directly
to them and proceded to get the run around, anyone ever shipped back a metal hallide
light. Those suckers are heavy. Needless to say I have it still in a storage room. Talk
about a sore spot....buyer beware.

If anyone is interested in LED units, you can easily build one for a reasonable price that will work efficiently for a lot of light over a smaller tank... I'm planning on building one myself for a pico-reef that I'll start a thread about soon, and there are some great threads on Nano-reef.com about it.

Unfortunate about PFO though, I was eventually going to need some MH ballasts made by them for the 20 gallon. Hope they survive!

careful buddy, you don't want to get sued....:lol: