Mark, I looked at MEMS some years back for another project was working on (a 3D laparoscope)and IMHO, patents are not as important as foundry capabilities. The basic principle of an MEMS is from the early 80' so that is probably no longer blockable.
As for applicability of MEMS development at MVIS to KROS work in optical switches. I would guess that the license was divided by "field of uses", and under these circumstances, there is often a 'consortium" type of approach, whereby, additional technology developed in one field of use but usable in another one, is freely available (freely, meaning no additional royalties) to all "field of uses" licensees. Thus, if KROS has a development that could be useful to MVIS, MVIS could use it and vice versa, without having to start and add royalties for each additional innovation. In essence, the MEMS technology could be licensed in whole with its future developments. That is the approach I have used in the past with "generic" inventions that have many different field of uses.
Without seeing the actual agreements, of course, all the above maybe "rational" but not relevant.
Zeev
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