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IMRA files lawsuit against Coherent in Germany

Date Announced: 22 May 2013

Suit covers ultrafast lasers; cites both Coherent and recent acquisition Lumera.

KARIYA, Japan, May 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IMRA America, Inc., the first and leading industrial femtosecond laser supplier, filed a patent infringement lawsuit on May 10 at the District Court of Duesseldorf in Germany, against the German subsidiaries of Coherent Inc., namely Coherent Kaiserslautern GmbH (formerly Lumera Laser GmbH) and Coherent (Deutschland) GmbH, asserting that certain laser products marketed by Coherent in Germany infringe the German part of the European Patent 0 754 103 B1 “Method for controlling configuration of laser-induced breakdown and ablation”. The official docket-no. of this lawsuit before the District Court of Duesseldorf is 4b O 38/13.

The suit involves a patent considered essential for the precise micromachining of most materials used for microelectronics applications with picosecond and femtosecond lasers. Material examples given in the patent are gold and glass.

The European Patent 0 754 103 B1 was invented by Professor Gerard Mourou (Presently Professor of the Ecole Polytechnique Haut Collège) and his colleagues while he was at the University of Michigan. IMRA is the exclusive licensee of this patent for all nonbiological applications.

“We have multiple license agreements with many laser manufacturers,” Takashi Omitsu, President of IMRA America remarked; “We truly try to avoid filing lawsuits. However, we could not come to a reasonable solution with them for both our existing licensees and ourselves. We filed this suit as a last resort.”

Source: IMRA

Contact

Tomoya Hirosumi
Director, Asia sales & marketing
IMRA America, Inc., Japan Branch Office
2-1 Asahi-machi, Kariya, AICHI, 448-8650,
JAPAN
Tel: +81-566-24-8714
Fax: +81-566-62-1607

E-mail: thirosum@imra.com

Web Site: www.imra.com/

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