Patents

Back in December, LG announced it will buy Kodak's OLED unit. The price was not revealed, but now Kodak has released their quarterly report, in which they reveal that the price was $100 million. Kodak also entered into a licensing transaction with LG which gave them $414 million in revenue.

via cintelliq

NanoMarkets have released a new report on OLED materials (Markets for OLED Materials: 2010-2017). They forecast that there will be an explosion in demand for OLED materials - which will grow from around $420 million in 2010 to $2.9 billion in 2015.

Key points from the report:

• OLED Lighting is expected to consume about 70% of OLED materials by 2015.
• Rigid glass substrates, which offer the best combination of performance, costs and manufacturability will be the de facto option at least through 2012.
• NanoMarkets sees a significant consolidation of control of important IP in the OLED materials space with UDC, Summation, and LG holding pivotal positions in the OLED materials IP mesh. Access to established IP is an increasingly important factor for success, especially for materials used in the organic layers of OLEDs.

OLED-Info readers get a 5% discount on this report, follow this link. When you checkout, make sure you use the our code - OLEDINFO.

LG Group has decided to create a new company that will handle all OLED patents and technology. It will be financed by LG Electronics, LG Display and LG Chem. The company will be created soon (hopefully before the end of 2009), and will probably be called LG OLED.

LG 15-inch OLED TVs

The new company will acquire all of Kodak's OLED patents, and will manage license contracts owned by Kodak.

LG Display is producing OLED panels (currently small/medium ones, up to 15", and has plans to start making large-sized OLED TV soon). LG Electronics is already selling OLED phones, and also the 15" OLED TV in Korea. LG Chem are working towards OLED Lighting, with plans to start producing panels in 2010. 

Via KoreaTimes

Kodak announced today that they have sold all their OLED related assets to a group of LG companies. Kodak will still have access to the technology to use in its own product.

Kodak is doing this to strengthen their financial situation. They also recognize that in order to realize the full value of the OLED business, it needs a significant investment.

This is a sad day for Kodak I think - they have invented OLEDs in 1970 and have been working on the technology for 40 years now (!). It'll be interesting to see what LG will do with Kodak's IP (which is mostly about Fluorescent OLEDs and manufacturing equipment). In any case, LG is showing that they are truly committed to OLEDs.

UDC says that the European Patent Office has rejected an opposition to one of their core flexible OLED patents in Europe. The opposition was filed by Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) back in 2006.

Source: UDC's conference call (via Seeking-Alpha)

eMagin issued financial results for its second quarter ending June 30, 2009. eMagin posted record sales and profits - they had 5.9M$ in sales, and 1.3M$ net income.

eMagin are seeing increased acknowledgment by customers of the advantages of their proprietary OLED microsidplay technology, and also lower royalties expenses - this is probably because OLED patents are starting to expire, and also they might have negotiated better deals with IP companies.

Solterra Renewable Technologies (wholly owned subsidiary of Hague Corp) today announced an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with the University of Arizona for the patented, intellectual property covering screen-printing techniques for OLED fabrication. Solterra's CEO Stephen Squires says that there are essential similarities between the screen-printing techniques to fabricate LEDs and the screen printing technology that Solterra is currently optimizing to print quantum dots to make thin-film solar cells.