Atomera has built an extensive patent portfolio since its founding in 2001, with our first US patents filed in 2003, and counterparts filed outside the US shortly thereafter. As a technology licensing company, our IP is a critical asset, so in this post I offer some insight into how we built our patent portfolio and how we are leveraging our intellectual property to enhance shareholder value.
Early Patent Activity
When Robert Mears founded Atomera in 2001, he had already invented materials technology that revolutionized long-haul fiber optics, most notably with his invention of the erbium-doped fiber amplifier, or EDFA (you can read the IEEE Spectrum magazine's write-up on it here). Atomera was based on the idea that similar approaches to doping crystalline substrates could benefit semiconductors. Accordingly, our early patents centered around altering the crystal lattice structure of semiconductor materials. Today we are engaged with semiconductor industry participants to understand how MST might be used in the devices they manufacture. So, while our early Atomera patents addressed concepts such as electron mobility in a MOSFET, our more recent patents cover a wide variety of device architectures that we believe will benefit most from MST.
Lean Years
To understand the timing of patent issuances and expirations, it is useful to look back at how our patent filing activity developed over the years. As the bar chart below shows, Atomera was very active in filing patents in the period from 2003-2007 when we filed 88 patents worldwide. Some of those early patents have started to expire. In the seven years after that (2008-2014), we filed only 14 patents. This was not due to a lack of innovation but was a response to the challenging funding environment faced by semiconductor startups, coupled with the global financial crisis. When the company recapitalized in preparation for our IPO in 2016, patenting activity started to pick up again. Between January 1, 2016 and now and we have filed 237 patents worldwide as compared to 107 patents in the 13 years from 2003-2015 - more than doubling our patent filings in about half as much time.
The number of patents we hold at any point in time can ebb and flow based on when we submit filings, patent office application processing timeframes, and expirations after the 20-year term. The elevated level of patent activity since our IPO provides patent protection into the 2040's and we intend to continue this strong trajectory.
Atomera Inc. published this content on 21 August 2023 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 21 August 2023 21:06:06 UTC.
Atomera Incorporated is engaged in the business of developing, commercializing and licensing processes and technologies for the semiconductor industry. The Companyâs lead technology, named Mears Silicon Technology (MST), is a thin film of reengineered silicon, typically 100 to 300 angstroms (or approximately 20 to 60 silicon atomic unit cells) thick. MST can be applied as a transistor channel enhancement to complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-type transistors. MST can be incorporated into the common types of semiconductor products, including analog, logic, optical and memory integrated circuits. MST is its patent-protected performance enhancement technology that addresses a number of key engineering challenges facing the semiconductor industry. Its customers and partners include foundries, integrated device manufacturers, fabless semiconductor manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers and electronic design automation companies.
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