Merck announced that it has acquired over 700 OLED display applications patent families from Konica Minolta. The acquired IP will be used to "further enhance Merck’s position as key supplier of OLED materials".
Merck did not detail the financial terms of this deal.
Konica Minolta has been developing OLED technologies for many years - and is still developing (and producing) OLED lighting technologies - hopefully this activity will remain in place following this large patent sale.
Merck is one of the leading OLED materials suppliers indeed - in the past two years the company accelerated its efforts, it seems, and announced collaboration projects with Universal Display, Visionox, CSoT, and OLEDWorks. Merck says it is the only company that develops the entire OLED stack - including Anode, HIL, HTL, EML, ETL and EIL materials, which allows it to adopt a complete system approach.
