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[Back] Three-Five Buys Zight 02.01.2002 Three-Five Systems (Tempe, AZ) has acquired major assets and
intellectual property (IP) and rehired six key employees of Zight Corporation
(Boulder, CO), which was formerly known as Colorado Microdisplay. The
deal ensures that Zight's well-regarded microdisplays will continue
to be available to In recent months, Zight was unable to raise new capital to fund operations
and product development. In addition, sales into the slowly developing
SVGA-class near-to-eye market were not enough to sustain the company.
As a result, Zight closed its doors and scheduled an auction of its
assets for This auction took place, as scheduled, with Three-Five acquiring about three-quarters of the assets. In addition, Three-Five purchased all the intellectual property belonging to Zight, which consists of 41 patent applications, several trademarks and the above mentioned assets, for less than $3M in cash. Three-Five assumed no debt in the transaction. This is a great deal for Three-Five considering that Zight's investors had pumped around $63M into the company. Jack Saltich, Three-Five Systems President and CEO said, "We already know about Zight's products because we had discussed possible manufacturing arrangements with them last fall. Zight is a perfect complement to Three-Five's focus on the projection market for LCOS microdisplays." This is a curious turn of events as Three-Five had an interest in the near-to-eye segment through its investment and manufacturing arrangement with inViso. But Three-Five declined to invest additional funds in inViso, as did others, so inViso folded last fall. However, Three-Five continues to negotiate with the company to acquire its IP. Al Davis, Three-Fives' Senior Director of Sales and Marketing for Microdisplays, said, "We think Zight has the best near-to-eye microdisplays in the industry, but their weakness was in manufacturing. We should be able to start production of their panels on our line within a month or two." Davis said he had talked with most of Zight's customers now, and that they were quite happy to have a source of displays for their products. Most will delay introduction of products to allow Three-Five to establish manufacturing. Three-Five will keep the Zight product development assets in Boulder
where its six new employees will soon return to work. Rehired was Zight's
co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer, Doug McKnight, along
with key personnel in device design, manufacturing and marketing. This
includes Saltich added, "With this acquisition and Three-Five's solid cash reserve, we plan to build on Zight's accomplishments in bringing near-to-eye products to appliances for computing, communications, digital imaging and entertainment. We believe that the work that has been done at Zight also sets the stage for our development of products supporting the arrival of 3G (third generation) technology in wireless telecommunication networks in 2003-2004. Therefore, we have also met with potential customers who will be key in developing products using 3G technology." Contact: Three-Five, Al Davis, 602-389-8797, adavis@mail.35sys.com FREE SAMPLE OF MICRODISPLAY REPORT
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