Canon

Hitachi and Canon have agreed to jointly develop and manufacture small and midsize (2.5"-3") OLED displays for digital cameras within two years, it was learned Saturday. The two firms will transfer a total of about 100 engineers to a new organization they plan to set up in early July to handle the project.

They also intend to build a new production line at an existing plant in Chiba Prefecture to turn out organic EL displays on a trial basis. Based on the results, the two partners expect to build a system to mass-produce the EL displays at relatively low cost, taking advantage of Canon's materials coating technology and production control know-how.

In an interview with C|Net, Canon's "digital camera guru" made some interesting remarks about OLEDs -

Canon has been involved in a patent dispute with U.S.- based Nano-Proprietary Inc., which prevented the Japanese company from putting SED flat-panel televisions on the market in 2007 as originally planned, the newspaper said today.

The firms have agreed to a tie-up on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels, a competing display technology, by which Matsushita and Canon would each invest more than 100 billion yen ($880 million) to take minority stakes in unit Hitachi Displays Ltd, it said.

Canon has been developing OLED panels in a bid to replace liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, which it now procures from outside suppliers for digital camera, camcorder and printer displays. Canon said it may offer small-sized flat TVs using OLED displays in the future, and will use SED for large-sized TVs.

Canon and Toshiba have been developing their SED technology since 1999 and the launch had originally been delayed until July 2007. That date has now slipped to the end of 2007.

A Texan judge ruled in a summary judgment that Canon did indeed violate the terms of the technology licensing agreement with Nano-Proprietary by bringing Toshiba in as a partner in SED manufacturing. The court has yet to determine what damage this has caused, but at this point a monetary fine may not be the worst of what Canon will undergo in continuing in SED production.

Unless Canon is successful in appealing the judgment, the company will have to renegotiate a new licensing agreement for Nano-Proprietary's technology if it is going to continue with plans to produce SED displays. With Canon now on the defensive it remains to be seen how aggressively Nano-Proprietary will leverage its apparent legal advantage. Regardless, the recent ruling will likely lead Canon to pause its plans for SED manufacturing yet again.