The joint development partnership of 25 man UK technology company Cambridge Display Technologies Ltd and Japanese giant Seiko-Epson Corp, which resulted in Monday’s launch of a tiny plastic TV screen (CI No 3,349) should light the way for other small UK and European companies, according to CDT chief Danny Chapchal. Fourteen months ago, around the time it announced its first license agreement with Philips Electronic NV (CI No 2,996) the company, which holds patents on light emitting polymers, began talks with Seiko-Epson. Chapchal says many of his colleagues thought he was mad to consider that a giant Japanese company would even talk to a virtual start up company like CDT. However it is this attitude, rather than the technology itself, which holds so many companies back, Chapchal believes. What was also particularly important in this relationship, says marketing director Mark Goschalk, was trust. It took Goschalk and Chapchal just one day out in Japan to sign a memorandum of understanding with Seiko’s director of basic research Dr Shimoda, and both companies went away and started work on the basis of this non-binding agreement. Before lawyers had finally finished dotting i’s and crossing t’s on the formal agreement, the companies had built a prototype of the tiny screen demonstrated to the world’s press on Monday. The two partners, ill-matched in size but not in technology are 50:50 partners in its joint development, and will share the spoils of any future products that come out of their work together. By the end of this year, they say we will see a 10 inch full color flat screen television. The tiny monochrome prototype is impressive enough. About half the size of a credit card and just as thin, the resolution running full motion video is impressive, without the restricted viewing angles usually found with a LCD display notebook computer screen, for example. One major breakthrough Seiko-Epson has had is to use ink-jet printing techniques to print the polymers onto the plastic. As well as using the company’s existing technology, this technique cuts out some 30 processes associated with traditional spin coating techniques, and therefore drastically reduces the cost of production. In addition the time taken to print a large screen with the light emitting polymers, is reduced to a couple of minutes from several days. Dr Shimoda says it is because the process lends itself to much of Seiko’s existing manufacturing equipment, that the two companies have been able to make such rapid progress in their joint development.
Seminal deal
The unveiling of this screen and the naming of its Japanese partner – kept closely under wraps until now – is, says Chapchal, CDT’s valuation event. Although companies have been knocking on its door to talk about licensing deals for the past year, CDT has been waiting to have something to show in order to put a true commercial value on these deals. In particular it has been jealously guarding the high information content licenses, for displays of 100,000 pixels or more, required for replacing cathode ray tubes in television sets. Now Chapchal is about to open the doors to several of those knocking and he expects some major deals to follow shortly. Chapchal, brought in, as he says, more as a mid-wife than a company doctor two years ago, to bring CDT’s technology into the world (CI No 2,996), believes the seminal deal for CDT was the one with Philips. This deal not only raised some money for the company, although as the first licensee Philips got a deal it was pleased with, but more importantly it settled some patent infringement disputes between the two companies, and showed the world there was some serious backing for the technology. Philips’ products using LEPs, probably mobile phones in the first instance, should be in the shops later this year. From this position of strength, CDT has been able to secure itself additional financing, from former Cable & Wireless chairman and one time UK secretary of state for Trade and Industry, Lord Young and his Young Associates venture capitalists (CI No 3,241), and also a smaller but high profile investment from Intel Corp. Both deals are phased investments over the next three years but are not conditional on the company meeting any targets. We are in the unique position, says Chapchal, of having the funding we need to cover our next three years of development, even if we don’t make a single sale during that time. With such a strong base upon which to build and with the Seiko-Epson deal promising to lure many others behind it, Chapchal’s eyes seem to light up almost as much as the polymers he works with.
