February 27, 2001–Osaka, Japan–Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.(SEI) has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Delaware Federal Court against Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and two of its U.S. subsidiaries, Furukawa Electric North America, Inc., and FITEL Technologies, Inc. SEI alleges in its complaint that Furukawa’s Rainbow Pump semiconductor pump laser module products infringe its U.S. Patent No. 5,845,030.

SEI’s ‘030 patent, entitled ‘Semiconductor Laser Module and Optical Amplifier,’ describes a critical advance in the area of semiconductor pump laser with Fiber-Bragg-Grating stabilization. The patent describes a semiconductor laser module providing an extremely stable power and wavelength with the help of Fiber-Bragg-Grating used in conjunction with an optical fiber amplifier resulting in superior fiber optic data transmission. This technology enables high channel count dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) amplification, as well as the forthcoming Raman Amplification.

Furukawa currently is marketing a wavelength-stabilized semiconductor laser module in the U.S., under the trade name “Rainbow Pump,” that SEI believes incorporates the ‘030 patented technology.