Sisvel S.p.a. - Società per lo Sviluppo dell'Elettronica

The creation of Sisvel was a result of several distinctive factors, one of which being the fortunate industrial policy of one of its founder partners, Indesit. This company was initially a manufacturer of white electrical household appliances, in particular refrigerators.

In the advent of progress and the necessity of diversifying its product mix, towards 1968, Indesit started to manufacture its first black and white televisions.

In 1972 based on its success, a research laboratory expressly for research and development activities in the field of television was created. The main line of study, during the fruitful seven to eight years of its activity, were based on the studies of ISA an Italian alternative to the PAL and SECAM television systems. The ISA project received a great deal of attention and debate, although the alternative system proposed by Indesit was not accepted by the Italian government due non conformity and harmonisation with the existing European systems.

Further lines of study of the Indesit engineers were applied to the applications of microprocessors within television appliances, on screen character generators, tuning devices and interactive controlling of the set. The results of this relatively short, but intense period of study was the basis for more than 250 families of patent and utility model applications.

Sisvel was later created by an agreement between some Italian Television producers in 1982, among which Indesit, with the aims of carrying out joint activities and the utilisation, both in the active and passive sense, of the groups industrial property rights belonging especially to Indesit. When due to financial difficulties Indesit ceased its production of televisions, in 1983, Sisvel bought the entire portfolio of Indesit patents. Over the years, the internal structure and shareholding has considerably changed, up to the present state in which the company now has its independence.

The rewards of such arduous activities are illustrated clearly in the graphic representation of Sisvel's licensing activities annexed to the present. Even in the earliest days, back in 1985, a decisive beginning can be witnessed; such beginning being the natural building block for the actual situation in which approximately 60 companies (including all the Japanese: Sony, Hitachi, Sharp, JVC, etc; all the Koreans: Samsung, Goldstar, Daewoo; all the Europeans: Philips, Grundig, Thomson, Nokia, etc.) have realised the value that Sisvel's intellectual property portfolio has on their products and therefore undersigned to license agreements.