Perhaps Dr. Seiichi Ooba is not well known to many Polychromers, but he has played an important role in Polychrome's history. In mid 1950 when he was in charge of Fuji Photo Film's new business development department, he has determined that they should license the presensitized printing plate technology and came to Polychrome. Fuji was aware that 3M was the dominant player in US but they refused to license Fuji. They found key patents by Polychrome, one on interlayer treatment by Ibert Mellan and the other a stabilizing overcoat reaction by Simon Chu and these patents were the reason they became aware of Polychrome as the potential source of the plate technology. It was reported that the R&D group within Fuji told Dr. Ooba that they would be ready to come out with their own technology within a few years. Dr. Ooba made a decision that the head start in Japan in plate production would be the key to lead the Japanese market and that they should not wait for the internal development and persuaded everyone to come to Polychrome. He was proven to be right; within a few years of licensing arrangement, Fuji became the dominant supplier in Japan and helped the growing printing industry in Japan. He passed away peacefully this winter at the age of 99 a few short days away from reaching 100.
Those who joined Polychrome later questioned the wisdom of licensing Fuji to create a strong competition, but we all should know that the arrangement gave a tremendous boost to Polychrome in recognition, financial rewards (towards the end of second term of licensing, licensing income was over a million dollars per year) and the engineering know how we received from Fuji.
