CopyTele (CTI) filed a lawsuit against E Ink Holdings, alleging an elaborate scheme to steal valuable, patented display technologies developed by CopyTele. CTI says that E Ink is infringing upon their electrophoretic display patents. CTI also filed a similar lawsuit against AU Optronics, I'm not sure what kind of technology is involved in this lawsuit.
Plastic Logic and SERELC developed together a new low-power outdoor digital signage solution based on Plastic Logic's flexible plastic displays. Each ZED (Zero Energy Display) unit consists of two 10.7" monochrome flexible plastic displays.
Plastic Logic says that the two displays have been "seamlessly tiled together", although the photo they released shows otherwise. In any case, the final display acts like a single 15.4" diagonal (150 dpi) panel that weighs just 115 grams and is less than 1 cm in thickness.
Pebble's E Ink watch started shipping to Kickstarter backers last week and Engadget already posted a review - a very positive one in fact. That say that it's been a pleasure to use and the implemented features work well - although functionality (currently) is quite limited. It's also an excellent value according to Engadget, especially for early Kickstarter backers.
Remember the Pebble E Ink smartwatch? Allerta says that they will begin shipping watches to Kickstarter backers on January 23rd. It will take them six to eight weeks to ship all 85,000 orders. Afterwards the company will begin to ship to other buyers ($150).
Allerta's Pebble is a smartwatch that can connect to iOS or Android devices. The watch has a 144-168 active-matrix E Ink display. The phone includes a vibrating motor, four buttons, a 3-axis accelerometer and Bluetooth.
E Ink is showing some new color Triton (Gen 2) E Ink prototypes, including one with front light. The displays are getting better, they say it's now almost like LCDs. Even though quality is better, and production costs have gone done, E Ink still does not see mass adoption of these panels by e-reader makers any time soon.
E Ink managed to get the color filters closer to the E Ink microcapsules, which means that more light is reflected from the displays. Coupled with the front-light technologies, the displays look better then before.
CST is showing their new CST-01 ultra-thin, flexible E Ink watch. The whole device is just 0.8 mm thick and weighs just 12 grams. It can full charge in 10 minutes (and runs for about one month). The lifespan is said to be about 15 years. Here's our friend Sriram Peruvemba (E Ink's marketing chief) showing this very cool phone:
CST just raised over $300,000 on Kickstarter to start production (the project goal of $200,000 was reached within 48 hours).
We're happy and proud to announce that after over a year in development, our second Kindle software title has been released. Utility Kit is a collection of must-have applications for your Kindle, which can enhance your reading experience and make your life easier. It includes seven different applications:
Intel, Plastic Logic and Canada's Queen's University have collaborated to create a flexible paper-like tablet, based on Plastic Logic's 10.7" flexible touch E Ink displays and Intel's Core i5 processors. A user can use several PaperTabs devices at the same time, and these can interact between them, as can be seen in the video below:
Roel Vertegaal, a director in Queen's University's human media lab estimates that most computers will look and feel like that - within five to ten years. It's likely that the displays will be full-color ones, probably based on OLED technology.
E Ink will soon move to new offices (140,000-square-foot) in the Technology Park Drive in Billerica, Mass. The company says they have "run out of room in Cambridge", and the new facility will allow them to have the entire R&D group in one place - together with the labs, pilot facilities and the test chambers.
The company is currently constructing the new labs in Billerica ,and they expect to start the move in mid-2013. It will take about 12 to 18 months to complete the move.