Court Ruling Clears Way for Canon SED TVs

Remember way back when Nano-Proprietary (now Applied Nanotech Holdings) sued Canon over the makup of its SED TV joint venture with Toshiba, claiming the corporate arrangement means SED TV wasn’t a Canon subsidiary and, therefore, the company didn’t have license to Nano-Proprietary technology central to SED TVs? Canon responded by completely taking over the joint venture with Toshiba, but the damage was already done: Canon lost the lawsuit in early 2007 and delayed the launch of SED TV technology a few months later.

However, the battle has continued to wend its way through the courts, and an appeals court ruled last week (PDF) that, since Canon is now the sole owner of SED TV, Inc., Canon had not broken its deal with Nano-Proprietary. The decision also re-instated Canon’s license to key SED technology patents, potentially clearing the way for Canon to restart its work on SED televisions. However, unless Canon had continued working on the technology on the sly, it would still need to solve problems of bringing the technology to market at competitive prices.

SED technology has the potential to offer flat panel displays that are brighter and offer higher contrast ratios than typical LCD flat panel displays, while consuming far less power. However, SED’s relevance in the marketplace may have diminished in the time spent battling over patents: LCD televisions have made significant improvements to image quality while lowering power consumption, and the LCD TV market set to enter a pricing war as more and more manufacturing capacity comes online.

Applied Nanotech Holdings says it is reviewing the decision and hasn’t made any decision on whether to continue to pursue the case.