2008. He said the company planned to start small-output production in the fall of 2007, but they do not expect SED displays to become a commodity and will not release the technology to the consumer market because of its expected high price, reserving it solely for professional broadcasting applications. Also, in December 2006 it was revealed that one reason for the delay was a lawsuit brought against Canon by Applied Nanotech. On 25 May 2007, Canon announced that the prolonged litigation would postpone the launch of SED televisions, and a new launch date would be announced at some date in the future. Applied Nanotech, a subsidiary of Nano-Proprietary, holds a number of patents related to FED and SED manufacturing. They had sold Canon a perpetual license for a coating technology used in their newer carbon-based emitter structure. Applied Nanotech claimed that Canon's agreement with Toshiba amounted to an illegal technology transfer, and a separate agreement would have to be reached. They first approached the problem in April 2005. Canon responded to the lawsuit with several actions. On 12 January 2007 they announced that they would buy all of Toshiba's shares in SED Inc. in order to eliminate Toshiba's involvement in the venture. They also started re-working their existing RE40,062 patent filing in order to remove any of Applied Nanotech's technologies from their system. The modified patent was issued on 12 February 2008. On 22 February 2007, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, a district widely known for agreeing with patent holders in intellectual property cases, ruled in a summary judgment that Canon had violated its agreement by forming a joint television venture with Toshiba. However, on 2 May 2007 a jury ruled that no additional damages beyond the $5.5m fee for the original licensing contract were due. On 25 July 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court's decision and provided that Canon's "irrevocable and perpetual" non-exclusive licence was still enforceable and covers Canon's restructured subsidiary SED. On 2 December 2008, Applied Nanotech dropped the lawsuit, stating that continuing the lawsuit "would probably be a futile effort". In spite of their legal success, Canon announced at the same time that the financial crisis of 2008 was making introduction of the sets far from certain, going so far as to say they would not be launching the product at that time