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Market News

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Senate is expected to debate the patent reform bill as early as this week. This comes on the heels of a court decision to block new rules the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proposed to deal with the surge of applications.

Majority leader Sen. Harry Reid is expected to bring the Patent Reform Act to the Senate between now and the end of May.

The Senate bill is in line with the House of Representatives bill that passed in the fall. Both bills aim to limit damages and excessive litigation, namely courts that are quick to set trial dates for patent suits. The legislation also requests the U.S. to move to a first-to-file policy.

Many large electronics firms are on board, claiming to be barraged with patent infringement litigation. Individual inventors and pharmaceutical companies have rallied against the measure, saying it would weaken the system that protects their innovations.

In its fiscal year 2007, the USPTO received more than 467,000 patent applications and ended the year with a backlog of 760,000 applications. In an effort to catch up, the office hired more than 2,400 new patent examiners in the past two years, say published reports.

LARGO, FL - ZD Integrated Circuits, Inc. and Channel One Limited have formed EQuality Services (EQS), a company to provide material management services, which includes component inspection, quality assurance and long term secure storage, for electronic system manufacturers.

“The increasing incidence of remanufactured and counterfeit electronic components in the marketplace makes it necessary for major corporations to ensure that the key electronic components they receive...are truly original and in pristine condition,” stated Craig Zurman, company. “We have developed the expertise to verify the quality of incoming products, and [have] the facilities to store those products in a precisely controlled environment.”

Mike Hewison of Channel One Limited said “we now have the ability to provide customized solutions for all of our customer’s material supply problems so that they may focus on the development and manufacture of their high reliability systems.”

EQuality Services will be led by Lee Melatti, who was previously with Future Electronics and National Semiconductor.

ENDICOTT NY - Binghamton University has officially opened the Center for Advanced Microelectronic Manufacturing (CAMM), located on a 10,000 square-foot property owned by Endicott Interconnect Technologies (EIT). The new center will begin researching and testing new manufacturing methods for the electronics industry.

“CAMM is a true partnership between government, academia and industry, [and] will provide BU the opportunity to perform unparalleled research in the area of flexible electronics and small-scale systems integration and packaging,” said Bahgat Sammakia, CAMM’s director and BU professor of mechanical engineering.

The roll-to-roll manufacturing method that the University will attempt to develop will reportedly print electronics on plastics in a method similar to printing newsprint onto newspapers, with the claimed potential to produce flexible electronics in far greater bulk than current manufacturing processes can now produce.

“By offering unique, state-of-the-art tools and process expertise for roll-to-roll manufacturing, CAMM will be a cornerstone of the new flexible electronics revolution,” said Charles Becker, a scientist at General Electric.