Merck has already announced plans to invest about €600 million ($655 million) in South Korea through 2025. Just last year, Merck opened a €15 million ($16.1 million) OLED sublimation purification facility at its existing Poseung Technical Center in Pyeongtaek. All this information has been mixed in with news in Korea of Merck succeeding in a patent infringement case against a Chinese company.,
Merck received a favorable judgment from the Düsseldorf District Court in Germany in a patent case against Beijing Bayi Space LCD Technology Co. Ltd. The court ruled that products using a specific Merck liquid crystal mixture cannot be sold in Germany due to intellectual property infringement. So, Merck has a bit of a PR win here in South Korea where intellectual property transgressions by Chinese companies are a major source of concern and discussion in the technology press.
Merck has invested heavily in R&D for liquid crystal mixtures over the years and holds an extensive patent portfolio in LCD technology. Merck has a robust patent portfolio and deep expertise in multiple types of liquid crystal mixtures and alignment modes that enable high-performance displays across a diverse range of applications. For television and large format displays, Merck offers polymer-stabilized vertical alignment (PS-VA) liquid crystals that provide ultra-high contrast, rapid response times, and excellent viewing angles. The company also has patented multi-domain vertical alignment (MVA) technologies for enhanced wide-viewing performance. In the mobile and IT device market, Merck’s proprietary fringe-field switching (FFS) mixtures deliver superior image quality under all lighting conditions along with low power consumption. The company has also patented ultra-brightness FFS (UB-FFS) formulations that push brightness and efficiency even further.
