A note on the strong chromatic index of bipartite graphs

The strong chromatic index s^′(G) is the minimum integer t such that there is an edge-coloring of G with t colors in which every color class is an induced matching. Brualdi and Quinn conjecture that for every bipartite graph G, s^′(G) is bounded by Δ₁Δ₂, where Δ₁ and Δ₂ are the maximum degrees among vertices in the two partite sets. We give the affirmative answer for Δ₁=2.