Ears On

A promising new video display technology suffered a potentially fatal setback last week. SED stands for Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display. Whether marketers would come up with a sexier name for the ultra-flat tube technology is something we won't find out in the near future because a federal judge has ruled that Nano-Proprietary, the licensor, can wiggle out of its agreement with Canon. The agreement dates from 1999. Subsequently Canon brought Toshiba into a joint venture that would have brought SED to market. That made sense--if you want to sell TVs, you work with a TV company. Meanwhile, with an eye on the burgeoning market for flat panels, N-P apparently became unhappy with the arrangement. So the company argued that by bringing in Toshiba, Canon had violated the licensing agreement. N-P refused to call off its legal pit bulls even after Toshiba sold its stake to Canon and cancelled plans to show an SED prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show two months ago. If N-P wins the appeals, Canon will have to negotiate a whole new licensing agreement with N-P, if it chooses, possibly in competition with Samsung. Fun facts:

Nano-Proprietary is based in Texas.

The judge sits on the federal district court in Texas.

Canon is not based in Texas.

Toshiba is not based in Texas. In other words, the provincial judge favored a local company over the big bad foreign multinationals. Prognosis, optimistic: When SED finally hits the shelves, it will wow videophiles with its black-level performance and shake up the maturing market for flat-panel DTVs. Prognosis, pessimistic: The market will have matured so much by the time SED hits that its moment will have passed. Leave it to a Texas cowboy to shoot himself in the foot.