Universal Display announced that it is buying Fujifilm's entire worldwide OLED patent portfolio - over 1,200 OLED patents and patent applications for $105 million. UDC will not only strengthen its existing OLED patent portfolio, but will also "explore new and exciting areas of OLED materials and product development for the future". Fujifilm will supply their highly functional materials (barrier films, conductive films, flexible substrates and more) to OLED makers. In the future the two companies intend to strengthen and enhance this alliance.
Fujifilm has been involved with OLED R&D for over 10 years, and have developed "promising new technologies in OLED materials as well as devices using such materials". We don't have a lot of information about those patents, besides the fact that they revolve around Platinum based phosphorescent OLEDs, blue phosphorescent materials and device structures.
This is a major purchase for UDC. The company has over $350 million in cash, and indeed back in May 2011, after raising $300 million, the company announced that they intend to acquire new IP. Now the company will be able to offer more kinds of materials and structures. Hopefully this will also bring them closer to a commercially viable blue PHOLED. A few days ago UDC announced they have invested $4 million in Plextronics, and will also co-develope soluble OLED material systems.
In June 2011 I visited UDC's booth at SID 2012 - you can read the interesting UDC updates from the conference here.
disclosure: the author of this post holds shares in UDC
