Is the agreement broken?

POET Technologies Inc. of San Jose, California USA announced a manufacturing services agreement with Wavetek Microelectronics Corporation. Wavetek is a member of UMC’s New Business Group in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan. POET says that its platform transfer and manufacturing agreement with the GaAs foundry is part of its objective of working with a “pure-play” foundry. POET also said in a press release that the initial results of sourcing wafers from its epitaxial wafer partners was encouraging.  POET’s epitaxial wafer partners processed the wafers at the Wavetek facility using POET’s proprietary technology.

POET recently transferred its proprietary technology to Wavetek under a nondisclosure agreement. The agreement related to all current manufacturing requirements including vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) in POET’s ongoing commercialization initiative. The previously announced manufacturing services agreement between the two companies was limited to prototype demonstration of VCSELs.

“Wavetek is respected internationally as a pure-play foundry,” said POET chief operations officer Dr. Subhash Deshmukh. “Its manufacturing capabilities provide POET the foundry services we need to meet the high volume and cost requirements that are critical to our success in delivering low cost monolithically integrated opto-electronic transceivers.”

Wavetek President C.G. Shih stated, “Wavetek is excited to provide the high-volume manufacturing capabilities POET needs to spark a rapid expansion of opto-electronics applications such as those enabled by the POET platform.”