June 13, 2005 Norcross, GA -- OFS announced today that it has commenced federal litigation against Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Company (YOFC), alleging that the China-based company infringes at least four U.S. patents related to singlemode and multimode optical fiber and processes for making optical fiber.

"The decision to proceed with this patent infringement filing was carefully considered," says Carl Johnston, general counsel for OFS. "We want everyone to know that we will vigorously protect our intellectual property from companies that illegally use our technology."

In a complaint filed on June 10, 2005 in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, OFS accuses YOFC of offering, distributing, selling, and importing optical fiber that infringes several U.S. patents. OFS is seeking unspecified monetary damages from YOFC, as well as a permanent injunction barring the importation and sale of YOFC's core suite of optical fiber based products.

OFS, the former U.S. optical fiber business of Lucent Technologies, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Furukawa Electric North America, which purchased OFS in 2001. According to a press release, the OFS intellectual property portfolio includes several hundred issued U.S. patents, many assigned from the Lucent patent portfolio as part of the 2001 purchase, and more that are the result of OFS research and development efforts since 2001.