Last Saturday, the Korean newspaper Hankook Kyungje Shinmun reported that Samsung is suing a former employee identified as Kim (which is just about as informative as identifying an American worker as "Smith") because he had left Samsung to work for LG. This, Samsung alleges, is a violation of Kim’s employment contract which bans him from working for a rival company for two years. Samsung is demanding a penalty of 10 million won ($8268) per day from Kim.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

What did Kim do for Samsung that makes him worth $8268 a day? Kim, according to the newspaper, was involved in the development of Samsung’s new Super AMOLED technology, which combines an AMOLED display with an on-cell touch screen, along with other detail improvements. Samsung has high hopes that this display will become dominant in touch-screen smart phones. Indeed, Samsung Electronics Executive VP S.S. Kim has predicted that Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) will make 600M (and perhaps as many as 1 billion) AMOLED cell-phone displays in 2015, at which point more cell phones will use AMOLED than LCD!

Right now, SMD has 98% of the AMOLED market, according to Hankook Kyungje Shinmun. LG, after years of development, is just gearing up for large-scale production. So, it’s understandable that SMD wants to hold on to its near monopoly for as long as it can. It’s understandable, but is it smart?

When I worked as a semiconductor design engineer for RCA years ago, we sometimes licensed technology to competitors because some customers would not buy devices unless they had a second source. With AMOLEDs today, there is a shortage of available product. (One reason Apple may not be using AMOLED displays in its most recent iPhone is that SMD couldn’t or wouldn’t supply enough displays.) Samsung may be taking an overly narrow view in suing Kim. Perhaps they should arrange a face-saving settlement with LGD, and allow Kim to help LGD expand the AMOLED market for everyone’s benefit.

That would also generate a greater cash flow for the industry overall, some of which could be siphoned off to invest in solving the scalability issues that prevent AMOLEDs from being simultaneously big enough and cheap enough to use for mainstream TVs. And that’s where the really big money is.

Besides, what’s Kim supposed to do with his hard-won AMOLED expertise? Go to Kumho and design tires?