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OLEDs and TechnoCorp Energy and how to value patents

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Once upon a time, the Kodak patent estate in OLEDs was viewed by some as an 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one wanted to acknowledge. Kodak sold its OLED patent estate in late 2009, but the buyer of the patents, LG, did not want the associated people.

Now, the people have formed TechnoCorp Energy.

Dan Rogers writes in Plastic Electronics:

LG bought Kodak's OLED business in a $100 million (?73 million) deal on 4 December 2009, ending Kodak's long-term interests in OLED technology for displays and lighting.

However, the South Korean electronics firm did not absorb the team at Kodak as part of the deal. As a result, TechnoCorp Energy could continue R&D into solid-state lighting as an independent venture, and has already been given seed funding to begin business in April this year. The company will be headquartered in Rochester, New York, where Kodak is also based.

One possible consequence of Kodak's deal with LG is that the latter will license the relevant OLED lighting technology back to the Kodak team at TechnoCorp, rather than develop it in-house.

Hmmm, IPBiz asks "how" to value those patents? Perhaps one value to TechnoCorp and a different value to LG?

See previous IPBiz posts:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/12/kodak-to-sell-lg-its-oled-technology.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2004/11/expiration-of-kodak-patents-changing.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on March 08, 2010 (boomark / email).