Patents - Page 13

Samsung and LG have agreed to resolve their OLED dispute outside of the court of law, and today Samsung dropped their injunction against LG. This is a good sign that the two companies will actually make peace on OLED technology - which will hopefully accelerate OLED development.

Samsung and LG have been involved in a legal battle over OLED IP for almost a year now. DisplaySearch speculated earlier this week that the two Korean giants may eventually collaborate on OLED technology, mostly due to fear from Japanese competition.

Earlier this week we reported that Samsung and LG will attempt to resolve their OLED technology patent disputes and settle the lawsuits outside of the courts. Now DisplaySearch posted an interesting article in which they speculate that the two Korean companies may cooperate on OLED TV technologies.

DisplaySearch gives three reasons for this possible cooperation:

A couple of weeks ago we reported that the Korean government will attempt to resolve Samsung's and LG OLED technology dispute, and today there are reports that the two companies have agreed to work out their issues. A "peace summit" was held at a Seoul hotel, and Samsung's Kim Ki-nam said that LG and Samsung will resolve the issues one by one. Hopefully we can get this patent fight behind us, hopefully this will accelerate OLED adoption by the two Korean giants.

In November 2012 Samsung filed a patent invalidation suit against seven of LGD's OLED patents. Two months earlier, LG Display filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics over OLED technology, saying that Samsung infringed upon seven of its OLED patents which relate to the design of the OLED panel, the driver circuitry and device design. LG seeks damages - and also a permanent injunction against the sale of Samsung's Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in South Korea.

According to reports, the Korean government will attempt to resolve Samsung's and LG OLED technology dispute. Policymakers in Korea say that cannot afford this conflict to escalate because Japanese and Taiwanese display makers are advancing in their own OLED technologies - potentially harming Korea's interests.

The latest news from that dispute came in November 2012 when Samsung filed a patent invalidation suit against seven of LGD's OLED patents. Two months earlier, LG Display filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics over OLED technology, saying that Samsung infringed upon seven of its OLED patents which relate to the design of the OLED panel, the driver circuitry and device design. LG seeks damages - and also a permanent injunction against the sale of Samsung's Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in South Korea.

Global OLED Technology (GOT) has filed a lawsuit against Eastman Kodak, claiming that 18 of Kodak's patent actually belong to GOT. Kodak says that these 18 patents are not related to OLED technologies and so were not part of the 2009 deal (when GOT bought about 2,200 OLED patents and patent applications from Kodak). We do not what are the actual patents involved.

GOT is also seeking to recover royalty payments from Pioneer that were paid to Kodak and not GOT. The Pioneer license was supposed to have been transferred to GOT but apparently Kodak wasn't able to obtain consent for the transfer.

Global OLED Technology (GOT) have won two key patent challenges in Europe (defending oppositions from Merck). GOT says this is significant for GOT and demonstrates that they will aggressively defend their patent rights throughout the world.

The first patent was EP 1730249, which details the use of certain anthracenes as non-emitting hosts in the light-emitting layers of OLED devices. The second patent is EP 1828342, which details the use of hole-transporting material adjacent to the phosphorescent light emitting layer. Both of these technologies enable high efficiency and long lifetime in OLEDs for both display and lighting applications.

Samsung has been awarded a new US patent (#8,330,347) that describes a foldable display made from two display panels that has smaller (but brighter) pixels at the "junction" between them. This allows the space between the panels to be smaller and create a foldable display. Such a design requires a panel where each pixel brightness can be controlled, so LCD is out of the question, and the patent mentions OLED, FED, Plasma and EL displays as possible candidates.

The original Korean patent was filed in 2006, so this isn't new. We hope that Samsung will be able to come-up with truly flexible OLED displays that will not need those smaller display at the junction because there won't actually be a junction - it'll be one large display.

The legal war between Samsung and LG Display continues: today Samsung Electronics filed a patent invalidation suit against LG Display, saying that seven of its OLED patents are invalid as they lack innovation. We do not know yet what patents are involved.

Two months ago LG Display filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics over OLED technology, saying that Samsung infringed upon seven of its OLED patents which relate to the design of the OLED panel, the driver circuitry and device design. LG seeks damages - and also a permanent injunction against the sale of Samsung's Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in South Korea. We assume that the seven patents in Samsung's new suit are those same patents.

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q3 2012. Revenues were $12.5 million (down from $21.8 million in Q3 2011). Net loss was $5.5 million (compared to a net income of $6.0 million in Q3 2011). UDC lowered their 2012 revenue forecast to be in the range of $80 to $82 million (previous expectations were $90 million to $110 million). This is obviously very disappointing, and UDC shares dropped about 40% after market (after falling 12% during the day).

So what went wrong?

The major setback from UDC's point of view is that Samsung Display did not adopt green emitter and host materials as expected. UDC still thinks SD will adopt green, probably early next year. Samsung is still using UDCs red PHOLED material, but they didn't add more production capacity and so red emitter sales are rather flat (although when compared to 2011, red emitter sales grew 89%) - and will probably continue to be so in the near future.

AUO is suing two former executives that allegedly stole technologies (including AMOLED related ones) from the company and supplied it China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT, a subsidiary of TCL). The Taiwanese Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) said that the investigation is nearly over and the findings will be passed over to prosecutors soon.

AUO says that the executives were compensated with annual salaries of over $1 million in exchange for the technology. Taiwan wants to become a major supplier of OLED panels and considers this leak very sensitive.