What They Say
An IP specialist, IPValue Management, Inc, said that it has bought 1,200 display-related patents from Mitsubishi Electric, which date back up to twenty years and cover LCDs and OLEDs.
What We Think
As long ago as 2003, Mitsubishi was looking after its LCD IP and we reported on a display, with a subsequent settlement for CPT to license IP from the firm for its LCD business. The Mitsubishi group is a classic ‘Keiretsu’, with no controlling holding company, but with each company holding shares in the others. I remember getting a big order for printers from the firm in the 1980s and the Finance controller of the company where I worked demanded a bank reference. Of course, the bank was Mitsubishi Bank.
In displays, the firm was very strong in CRT with its Diamondtron technology and I visited the CRT plant in Kyoto a couple of times. Famously, it made some of the largest CRTs. It had a TV factory in Scotland among other businesses. However, it recognised early on that it would be hard to stay in the CE business and got out of TV. It combined its monitor business with NEC but has stayed in the control room display business, with cubes, LCDs and LEDs. Its Diamond Visiton brand was well known. Surprisingly, when we went to check on a couple of things on the corporate website, the links for the video wall business and large LED businesses didn’t work. Nor did the contact links for Diamond Vision on its website. I have reached out to Mitsubishi to check if has quietly withdrawn from the stadium LED business.
In June 2020, the firm announced that it would finally stop its TFT-LCD module business which had been aiming at industrial and automotive displays. (Mitsubishi Electric Announces End of Production of TFT-LCD Modules) The firm had good technology especially in extending the temperature range of these modules.
As well as its LCD business, Mitsubishi developed OLEDs and had an unusual concept of using individual ‘large pixel’ passive matrix OLEDs for public displays, but it only had a small number of installations. (BR)
