AmberWave Systems Corp.

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AmberWave Systems Corp.

Company overview. AmberWave Systems Corporation is a privately held semiconductor technology company based in Salem, New Hampshire (13 Garabedian Drive). It was founded in 1998 as AmberWave LLC by MIT materials science professor Eugene Fitzgerald, becoming AmberWave Systems Corporation in 1999, and is generally described as an MIT spinout. It remained venture-backed and privately held; trade coverage in 2005 reported roughly 20 employees and more than $66 million in venture financing raised since founding. Funding and founding-year details vary across databases (some list 1994/1995 or a Lowell, MA headquarters), so those figures should be treated cautiously.

Products / services. AmberWave developed and commercialized strained silicon technology — processes that strain the silicon lattice (typically using relaxed SiGe buffer layers) to increase charge-carrier mobility, boosting chip speed and reducing power consumption in CMOS devices. Its business model combined IP licensing of strained-silicon materials, processes, and device technology to semiconductor manufacturers with sales of strained-silicon wafers to customers. Announced technology partners included AMD and UMC. It is an operating technology developer and licensor, not a pure shell or assertion vehicle.

Patent-litigation posture. AmberWave appears in the case data as an active two-way litigant (one case as plaintiff, one as defendant), tied to a single dispute with Intel over its strained-silicon portfolio. It sued Intel for infringement in the plaintiff-friendly E.D. Tex. (Marshall Division), while Intel filed a parallel declaratory-judgment action in D. Del. The Texas action was transferred to Delaware under the first-to-file rule.

Notable cases. AmberWave Systems Corp. v. Intel Corp. (E.D. Tex., filed July 15, 2005) asserted U.S. Patent 6,881,632 (strained-channel inverter/CMOS fabrication); Intel Corp. v. AmberWave Systems Corp. (D. Del., Intel filed May 25, 2005) sought a declaration of non-infringement of U.S. Patent 6,831,292 (impurity gradients in strained layers). AmberWave later added U.S. Patent 6,946,371. The parties settled in March 2007, with Intel taking a 10-year license to all AmberWave patents and applications; terms were undisclosed.