Posted on Monday, January 15 2007 @ 2:07 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Canon says
it's going to buy Toshiba's stake in their flat-panel SED display venture to resolve a patent dispute with Nano-Proprietary.
Canon will now own the unit that was set up in 2004 to develop a new type of thin panels that can be used in TVs to challenge consumer electronics giants such as Samsung Electronics and Matsushita Electric Industrial.
The move is aimed at appeasing Texas-based Nano-Proprietary, which filed a lawsuit claiming that its 1999 agreement to license technology to Canon did not extend to Toshiba. Toshiba has a 50 percent stake in the joint venture, called SED Ltd.
But it may also pose a bigger risk for the future of Canon, the world's top maker of copiers and digital cameras, which has been hoping the new display business will become a major profit driver amid expected cooling demand and price declines in its existing core products.
