Patents - Page 21

OLED-T today announced a new patented host material for OLED displays that delivers significant performance benefits compared with existing materials. The host layer is a crucial layer in the make-up of an OLED display as it impacts its performance including efficiency and lifetime. The new OLED-T material, called E746, is targeted as a direct replacement and upgrade path for aluminium quinolate (Alq3), the host material most commonly used throughout the OLED industry.

OLED-T has developed E746 for OLED displays in the mobile market such as mobile phones and digital cameras where its power consumption and lifetime performance benefits are expected to deliver improved product performance.

In fluorescent red and fluorescent green customer OLED display devices, OLED-T’s E746 material outperforms Alq3 in terms of energy efficiency, colour co-ordinates, lifetimes and voltage drift. E746 enables OLED displays to be manufactured with a current efficiency increase of between 30% and 50%, a power efficiency improvement of as much as 45 to 80 per cent and a lifetime increase of 100 per cent for fluorescent red and 200 per cent for fluorescent green.

OSRAM and Philips have signed a patent crosslicense agreement covering optoelectronic semiconductors. The agreement involves the mutual licensing of patents for all inorganic and organic LED.

The agreement relates to patents held by Philips, including the US subsidiary Lumileds, and by OSRAM including its subsidiary OSRAM Opto Semiconductors.

Air Products and the University of Connecticut today announced an exclusive licensing agreement under which Air Products may develop and market materials covered by the University's recently issued United States patent 7,071,289 entitled "Polymers Comprising Thieno [3,4-B] Thiophene and Methods of Making and Using the Same." The technology will help increase the lifetime of Polymer Light Emitting Diodes (P-OLEDs) for displays.

Building on the fundamental invention of poly (thieno [3,4-b] thiophene) by Professor Gregory Sotzing at the University of Connecticut, and dopant polymer technology by Air Products, the two institutions have developed Hole Injection Layer (HIL) materials for P-OLEDs which provide a dramatic increase in display lifetime compared to conventional HIL materials, without need for a costly protective interlayer.

UDC and Seiko Epson signed a settlement and license agreement over OLED patents and inkjet printing patent. There is not a lot of information available yet, besides the Following Form 8K:

UDC entered into a Settlement and License Agreement with Seiko Epson Corporation ("Epson"). Under the terms of the agreement, the Registrant licensed one of its ink jet printing patents and certain related patent filings to Epson. Epson's license rights include the right to grant sublicenses to third parties, subject to specified limitations in the agreement. In consideration of the license, the parties resolved outstanding issues concerning the licensed patent rights and Epson agreed to pay a fixed amount to the Registrant. If, within a specified period of time, the parties enter into a broader license agreement covering other aspects of the Registrant's OLED patent portfolio, this amount is creditable against license fees and royalties payable under that broader license agreement.

DisplaySearch has released the Q1'06 issue of the Quarterly Organic Semiconductor Patent Analyst Report (OSPA). This latest issue of OSPA analyses the 1,598 granted and published patents relating to organic semiconductor technologies issued during Q3'05 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), European Patent Office (EPO) and World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

In this issue of OSPA, key inventors of organic semiconductor patents for the period 2003-2005 are identified: The inventor with the most organic LED patents is S Yamazaki (Semiconductor Energy Laboratory, Japan), for organic transistors the most prolific inventors are K Hirai (Minolta, Japan) and then W Fix (PolyIC, Germany), for photovoltaics the top inventor is C Brabec (Konarka Technologies, US) and for organic memory devices it is S Pangrle (AMD, USA).

Read more here

Ron Mertens from OLED-Info.com recently had the opportunity to interview Janice Mahon, Universal Display's VP of technology commercialization.

Janice, could you give a small introduction about UDC, and about your PHOLED products?

Universal Display Corporation (NASDAQ: PANL) is a world leader in the development of innovative OLED technology for use in flat panel displays, lighting and other opto-electronics applications. Founded in 1994, Universal Display provides state-of-the-art OLED technology and services to OLED manufacturers to enhance their products' features and competitive advantage. We have developed proprietary OLED technologies and materials that should provide dramatically enhanced display performance at lower costs than today's liquid crystal displays.

DisplaySearch and cintelliq have announced a distribution agreement whereby cintelliq will produce and DisplaySearch will market and distribute the Quarterly Organic Semiconductor Patent Analyst Report (OSPA).
The Quarterly Organic Semiconductor Patent Analyst Report is a 200+ page quarterly report that provides an overview of patents related to organic semiconductor technologies that were published or granted by the European, Japanese, US or World patent offices in the previous quarter. Each issue analyses about 1200 patents, covering areas such as LEDs, substrates, photovoltaics, transistors, memory cells, encapsulation, materials, patterning, deposition, lasers, sensors, and fabrication.
The report classifies patents to identify areas of greatest activity, as well as highlighting interesting trends in research and patenting. The report also analyses the patents by assignee, tracking the major players in the industry and spotting new entrants to the field. Patents issued to academic organizations are monitored, as are patents issued to the major OLED licensors, Kodak and CDT, and their licensees.

Read more here

Universal Display says there is no row between it and UK organic LED company Cambridge Display Technology following a patent UDC revealed recently. The patent is primarily about the ability to ink-jet print OLEDs using small molecular materials, instead of polymeric materials, for light emission, Janice Mahon, v-p of technology commercialisation at US-based UDC told Electronics Weekly. CDT’s patents largely cover polymeric emissive materials and it is unlikely the patent will cause a conflict.

However, while UDC’s technology in this new patent is fundamentally small-molecule and not polymer, UDC’s patent portfolio broadly covers phosphorescent OLED technology, said UDC’s Mahon. It is too early to tell what structures will be commercialised. We have a very important phosphorescent portfolio just as CDT has a very important polymer portfolio, said Mahon. Mahon added: The competition is LCD, it is not polymer versus small molecule.

CDT announced today that it has acquired an important portfolio of patent rights from Maxdem Inc. The portfolio includes five US patent applications and their foreign equivalents relating to new light emitting polymer compositions and applications. The deal also includes a license to a large number of patents / applications relating to polyphenylene polymers and other polymer compositions and purification methods. These are expected to be useful in future materials improvements.

Included in the acquisition from Maxdem is a patent application for the invention of phosphorescent compositions containing a critical class of polymer materials in combination with metals / metal ions. CDT believes this provides a fundamental position in the use of conjugated polymers to achieve high efficiency phosphorescent emission in solution processable devices, whether for ink jet printing or any other means of solution processing.

UDC announced today that it has been awarded a significant patent covering ink-jet printing of phosphorescent OLED displays, US Patent No. 6,982,179, titled "Structure and Method of Fabricating Organic Devices".

"This PHOLED ink-jet printing patent provides another option for OLED manufacturers in choosing how to produce displays using our proprietary phosphorescent OLED technology," said Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Operating Officer of Universal Display Corporation. "The patent is a further demonstration of the breadth and depth of Universal Display's PHOLED technology, which is widely recognized as critical for OLED displays - from small, where power efficiency is critical, to large, where power efficiency equates to less heat generation."