Business briefs

11 Feb 2005

Including news from Cree, Nichia, Northrop Grumman, Corning, Kopin and more.

•  Cree of the US and Nichia of Japan have agreed to cross-license their patents relating to LED technology for white lighting. The deal is said to complement an agreement signed between the two companies when they settled litigation against each other in November 2002.

•  SPIE says that its Photonics West meeting, which was held in San Jose, US, last month drew record crowds. Attendee figures were up more than 700 on last year and broke through the 15 000 mark. A total of 786 companies took part in the exhibition. SPIE says it will use a new exhibit pavilion for next years' event to cope with increasing demand.

•  Six companies are to form a Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) alliance to accelerate development of the technology. The companies are CMC Magnetics, Fuji Photo Film, Nippon Paint, Optware, Pulstec Industrial and Toagosei. The HDV technology will be able to record more than 1TB of data and have a transfer rate of over 1Gbps.

•  Northrop Grumman has established a direct energy systems (DES) unit in its space technology sector. Northrop says the DES unit will help it "transition high-energy laser systems from the laboratory to warfighters". Art Stephenson, former director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, will become vice president of the DES unit.

•  Kopin, US, has formed a joint venture called KO-BRITE to spin-off its InGaN LED know-how into Asia. Kopin expects to cease all of its LED manufacturing activities by the end of March 2005 and transfer its LED operation to KO-BRITE by July 2005. The other partners are an undisclosed LED packaging maker, venture capital firm WK Technology and KTC, a Taiwanese III-V semiconductor manufacturer. Kopin will have a 20% share in the new venture.

•  The US Display Consortium (USDC) has awarded Vitek Systems a contract to develop a high-volume roll-to-roll process for making flexible OLEDs. The project is based on exploring Vitek's flexible glass substrate technology. The USDC is a partnership between private and public organizations which is trying to develop the electronic-display industry supply chain.

•  Corning expects the LCD glass market to grow between 40% and 60% this year and continue to grow at a compound annual rate of 40% through 2007. "As CRT-based televisions continue to decline in market penetration, we believe LCD TV will emerge as the primary alternative technology in the below 40-inch market," said Peter Volanakis, president of Corning Technologies.

•  Fujitsu has agreed to transfer all of its LCD operations to Sharp. The agreement will see Fujitsu transfer the R&D, manufacturing and sales operations of its subsidiary Fujitsu Display Technologies Corp (FDTC) and all related R&D equipment at Fujitsu Laboratories to Sharp. Sharp is expected to take on FDTC's personnel and Yonago plant in the Tottori prefecture, Japan, and will gain all related IP held by the Fujitsu group. Both parties are now discussing the details of the deal.