Aptina (U.S.) Inc.

I'll research Aptina (U.S.) Inc. to verify its profile.

Aptina (U.S.) Inc. is the U.S. operating entity of Aptina Imaging Corporation, a fabless semiconductor supplier of CMOS image sensors headquartered at 3080 North First Street, San Jose, California. The business traces to Photobit, the JPL spinoff founded by Eric Fossum's team that commercialized the CMOS active-pixel sensor; Photobit was acquired by Micron Technology in 2001, and Micron's image-sensor division was renamed Aptina in 2008 and spun off as an independent company in 2009. Per ON Semiconductor's June 2014 investor presentation, Aptina had approximately 650 employees and trailing-twelve-month revenue of roughly $532 million as of May 29, 2014, with an IP portfolio of about 2,000–2,500 issued and pending patents.

Products and operations. Aptina designed and sold CMOS image sensors, image signal processors and wafer-level camera modules for automotive, mobile/handset, surveillance and security, medical, PC-camera, DSC/DVC and gaming applications. Its automotive line included rear-view camera sensors and the ASX344AT image-processing SoC. The company was fabless, using foundry partners including LFoundry in Avezzano, Italy, and it acquired Micron's color-filter-array processing and imaging-sensor assets and Nampa, Idaho facility in August 2014.

Ownership. Aptina ceased to be independent in 2014: ON Semiconductor signed a definitive agreement on June 9, 2014 to acquire Aptina for approximately $400 million in cash, and completed the purchase on August 15, 2014, making Aptina a wholly-owned subsidiary. ON Semiconductor (now onsemi, Nasdaq: ON) reported Aptina contributed about $71.6 million of revenue in Q3 2014.

Litigation posture. Aptina (U.S.) Inc. appears once in the tracked data, solely as a defendant (0 plaintiff cases), which is the profile of an operating company being targeted rather than a patent asserter. The single case is Collabo Innovations, Inc. v. Aptina (U.S.) Inc. et al, filed August 22, 2014 in the District of Delaware — about a week after the ON Semiconductor acquisition closed — with four defendants, five patents-in-suit and 23 accused products; it closed October 19, 2015. Collabo Innovations has been identified by RPX as a patent-assertion subsidiary of Wi-LAN Inc. (now Quarterhill), asserting acquired semiconductor and imaging patents. The Delaware venue, rather than plaintiff-friendly East Texas, is notable.