Patents - Page 17

Universal Display (UDC) were speaking in the SID 2011 investor forum. They have recently raised $250 million, and when asked about their plans for this cash, the speaker said that they will be looking at IP acquisition - especially at doing more material layers.

This has been speculated before, but it's very interesting to hear it directly from UDC. Two possible targets for acquisition are Novaled (which indeed develops and sells non-emissive layer OLED materials) and Plextronics. It is also possible that UDC will purchase patents or technology and not an entire company (as they did in March 2011, buying 74 patents from Motorola).

Cambridge Display (CDT) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) Organic Nano Device Laboratory (ONDL) signed a five year intellectual property (IP) pipeline licensing agreement to commercialize the innovations arising from NUS's polymer-OLED (PLED) research.

Under the terms of this agreement, CDT will be able to access new innovations from ONDL research and take licenses in existing and new IPs in PLED displays and lighting, solar cells and thin film transistor circuits. CDT will pay royalties to the NUS if/when they commercialize these activities.

Universal Display and Samsung announced another extension (till June 30, 2011) to their license agreement (that was announced back in 2005). Samsung will continue to use UDC's PHOLED materials (red, and soon green) in their AMOLED products.

This is the fourth three months extension between SMD and UDC - the companies still can't seem to negotiate a new agreement.

Update 2: Universal Display announced the pricing of the public offering: $46 per share. They will sell 5 million shares (plus additional optional 750,000 if there is over-allotments). The net proceeds will be around $217 million (and $250 million if the optional shares are sold as well).

Update: According to a Korea Times article, UDC lost the patent suit in Japan, and their PHOLED material patents have been invalidated - which means that other companies can make phosphorescent OLED materials, at least in Japan. We're not sure if this report is valid though as UDC said yesterday they are still awaiting news on that lawsuit, and we're not sure if those patents aren't material...

Universal Display announced plans to offer 5 million common stocks, which will raise around $225 million according to the current stock price. UDC has around $70 million in cash currently, so it'll be interested to see what they plan to do with so much money. Perhaps they want to acquire a company or they actually do plan to become an OLED lighting manufacturer...

Back in September 2000, Universal Display (UDC) licensed 74 OLED related patents from Motorola. Today the company announced that it will purchase those patents, and so terminate the license agreement and stop paying royalties to Motorola.

Here's a full list of those patents:

Image Portal are selling their OLED related patents - which will be auctioned off at ICAP Ocean Tomo's Spring 2011 Live IP Auction on March 31, 2011 in New York City. Basically their invention is using several small OLED display tiles to create one large, seamless and continuous OLED display. This is achieved by making the edges of the tiles tilted at an angle and so the remaining portion is kept underneath the display area of an adjacent tile and is used for electrical connections.

Using smaller OLED tiles to create a large display is not a new idea (that's how Mitsubishi's Diamond Vision OLED screens work) - but here the company is describing a display in which you won't be able to see the seams between the display.

Researchers from the University of Michigan led by Jinsang Kim developed new pure-organic phosphorescence materials made primarily of inexpensive carbon, oxygen, chlorine and bromine and are "easy" to synthesize. This is the first time anyone created an phosphorescence OLED that does not contain any metals. These materials could be used to create cheaper OLEDs (as OLEDs today still need a little bit of expensive metals in them). The new materials exhibit quantum yields of 55%.

The light in those OLEDs comes from oxygen and carbon molecules called "aromatic carbonyls". These materials form strong halogen bonds with halogens in the crystal to pack the molecules tightly. This arrangement suppresses vibration and heat energy losses as the excited electrons fall back to the ground state, leading to strong phosphorescence.

Today we learned that Apple filed three OLED display related patents lately. The main patent (#20100321305) is about driving an OLED display structure that is integrated with a touch sensor (Samsung's Super-AMOLED is such a device, and we know that AUO is also developing an integreated multi-touch AMOLED). 

The second patent (#20100265187) discusses signal routing to an OLED structure that includes a touch actuated sensor configuration. The third patent (#20100265188) discusses the  integration of a touch actuated sensor configuration with an OLED structure.

The US Patent Office published a new patent application from Apple - combining the Magic Mouse touch interface with a flexible OLED or another specialized display surface made of collimated optical glass that contains a unique magnifying capability.

The idea is that the display can be used for all sorts of application - for example displaying a calculator when in use with Apple's Numbers application or magnifying text when using Apple's Pages application. Apple wants to use a flexible display because the mouse's surface is non-planar.

Universal Display and Samsung announced another extension (till March 31, 2011) to their license agreement (that was announced back in 2005). Samsung will continue to use UDC's PHOLED materials (red, and soon green) in their AMOLED products.

The original agreement expired a while back and it seems that the two companies aren't able to negotiate a new agreement yet - so they keep extending the existing agreement (that's the third three month extension already).