Revolutionary Television Design Killed by Patents

May 29, 2007 3:35 PM by Stephan Kinsella (Archive)

Ah, gotta love the "innovation-stimulating" effect of the federal-legislation-created patent system: SED televisions delayed, again -- possibly forever:
"Damn, not another SED television delay. Yup, Canon and Toshiba just announced the postponement of the "late 2007" launch of their SED televisions citing the prolonged patent lawsuit with Nano-Proprietary as the reason. Presumably, Canon is in no mood to strike a new licensing agreement with both Nano-Proprietary and Toshiba as required by a previous ruling which sided with Nano-Proprietary. Wait, it gets worse. Not only has the litigation delayed the launch of Toshiba's 55-incher with 100,000:1 contrast, Canon also announced that they've stopped work on the technologies required to bring production costs down to that of LCDs and plasmas. That calls into question the commercial viability of the technology in the long run. Whatever, we've had it, we're turning our attention to OLED -- hear than Sony and Toshiba? You'd better not let us down."