Coming to a small screen near you, MED technology is reborn

Now MicroEmissive Display's pioneering technology could finally be brought to fruition – 18 months after the company fell into administration.

Glasgow-based patents firm Metis, which specialises in identifying and exploiting embedded values in intellectual property, is marketing a portfolio of 16 patents of MED technology, which could see the miniature screens brought to mass market for the first time.

Multinational technology companies have already expressed an interest in buying the patents for use in cameras, computers, video technology and screens for small portable music devices.

But it is not only firms actively planning to use the technology in saleable products which have contacted Metis – founded by Stephen Robertson, the former Scottish manager of the London Stock Exchange – in connection with the sale.

Other potential buyers include companies specifically set up to buy up patents, and make their money out of taking legal action against other technology developers who try to create something similar.

Aim-listed MED, which was founded in 1999 as a spin-out from Edinburgh and Napier Universities, collapsed in November 2008, just as it was set to take the technology to the wider market. Directors blamed the recession, saying credit which would have allowed it to expand had dried up.

Its key technology, which won it a number of awards, including European Semiconductor Start-Up of the Year, was based on the discovery that electricity emits light if it is passed through an organic polymer, enabling it to develop screens using only a fraction of the power required by existing small-screen technology.

MED's co-founder Dr Ian Underwood, welcomed the potential sale.

"The people who were involved in MED had a belief that what MED was making was worthwhile and there was a market for it," he said. "If someone picked that up to address these markets that MED was planning to address, then we would be very happy."

MED's own research, carried out before its collapse, estimated a head-mounted displays market for both consumer and military use of $937 million (626m) and a camera and camcorder market of 200m by 2012.

It is understood that a large number of companies, including well-known global firms, have already expressed an interest in the patents. It is believed a sale could be announced in less than a month.

Nat Baldwin, head of corporate recovery at Metis, added: "We have been marketing the technology to a range of companies, including big multinationals and smaller companies for whom this kind of technology is a niche market. There has been a lot of interest in the patents for a variety of uses."

Baldwin added that a number of "non-practising entities" – companies which buy up patents to make money from the royalty payments and legal suits – had also contacted the firm.

This type of company is more commonly known in America, where the concept began, as a "patent troll".

"We have also been contacted by some firms which do not actually plan to use the technology," he added. "This seems to happen more in America than here, although they also look to buy up UK patents."

Campbell Newell, of Scottish patent agency Marks & Clerk, said non-practising patent holders were becoming more common.

"It is definitely something that is becoming a lot more prevalent now," he said. "They go out and buy up patent rights and chase around after people for royalty payments.

"It is really just somebody being clever and taking up a business opportunity."