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Technology Stocks : Mattson Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: semi_infinite who wrote (1126)	4/23/1999 6:32:00 PM
From: Q.	Respond to of 3661

Ray, the design of the RTP product was discussed in another cc approximately a year ago. The context was that the analyst was interested in how vulnerable Mattson was to patent-infringement lawsuits by Applied. This was a popular issue to discuss at that time because AMAT had just taken Novellus to the cleaners in an infringement case dealing with TEOS-CVD, and AMAT was at the same time suing AG for infringement on RTP. Here's what I remember about Brad's discussion: AMAT and AG use multiple lamps, and AMAT's tool has lots of sensors to detect and adjust the radiation uniformity, making the product rather complicated. Mattson's product has a heat source that is not a lamp, but something more furnace-like and therefore it doesn't need that complexity. In that cc the analyst asked what the rise time was for the 'rapid' part of the heating, and Brad gave a number which I don't remember, and I don't remember how close it came to the rise time for the lamps. I also don't know how Mattson's tool switches the heat on and off -- it's more obvious how you do this with lamps, but how Mattson gets it to switch on and off more rapidly than a furnace I don't know. I don't really know all the details because I haven't seen any more info, but I hope that helps a little. Re. the risk of litigation, Brad's point was that the product is so different from Applied's that any lawsuit would be frivolous.