Canon to buy Toshiba's stake in display unit

Canon said on Friday it will buy out Toshiba in their flat-panel display venture to resolve a patent dispute with Nano-Proprietary in the United States.

Canon will now own the unit that was set up in 2004 to develop a new type of thin panels that can be used in TVs to challenge consumer electronics giants such as Samsung Electronics and Matsushita Electric Industrial.

The move is aimed at appeasing Texas-based Nano-Proprietary, which filed a lawsuit claiming that its 1999 agreement to license technology to Canon did not extend to Toshiba. Toshiba has a 50 percent stake in the joint venture, called SED Ltd.

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