Cooperation Agreement for Small Form-Factor Pluggable Transceivers

Agilent Technologies, Blaze Network Products, E2O Communications, Inc.,

ExceLight Communications, Finisar Corporation, Fujikura Technology America Corp.,

Hitachi Cable, Infineon Technologies Corp., IBM Corp., Lucent Technologies,

Molex, Inc., Optical Communication Products, Inc., Picolight, Inc.,

Stratos Lightwave, Tyco Electronics

I. Purpose of the Cooperation Agreement (Agreement)

Each party desires to establish internationally compatible sources of a pluggable fiber optic transceiver module in support of standards for fiber optic systems including Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), FDDI, Fibre Channel, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet, and Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) / Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) applications.

Each party further desires to establish uniformity in the industry for the Transceiver “Package Dimensions”, “Cage and Electrical Connector System”, “Host Board Layout”, “Electrical Interfaces”, and “Front Panel Bezel Requirements” as described in Appendices A-B.

Each party expects that the establishment of compatible sources for an interchangeable transceiver module will allow the entire fiber optic marketplace to grow more rapidly. This enhanced marketplace growth, customer choice, and vigorous competition are the express purposes of this Agreement. Each party acknowledges this agreement provides a solution with height as a primary limiting constraint and may not provide an optimum solution for applications with different constraints.

The parties desire to establish compatible sources for additional products in the future.

II. Agreement

A. General

The parties agree to cooperate by supporting common product specifications for pluggable fiber optic transceivers with the package “Package Dimensions”, “Cage and Electrical Connector System”, “Host Board Layout”, “Electrical Interfaces”, and “Front Panel Bezel Requirements” as shown in Appendices A-B. The overall package dimensions shall not exceed the maximum indicated dimensions, and the mounting features shall be located such that the products are mechanically interchangeable with the cage and connector system. In addition the overall dimensions and mounting requirements for the cage and connector system on a circuit board shall be configured such that the products are mechanically and electrically interchangeable.

The electrical and optical specifications shall be compatible with those enumerated in the appropriate standards (i.e. the IEEE 802.3z Gigabit Ethernet standard and the ITU G.957 Synchronous Digital Hierarchy standard). Recommended circuit layouts for electrical input and output terminations, and grounding practices are also described in Appendix B.

The transceivers per this agreement will accept an optical connector such as the duplex LC, MT-RJ or the SG connector. This agreement does not preclude any of the parties from offering SFP transceivers with other connectors.

Internal design of the SFP transceiver is entirely at the discretion of each party and is not covered by this Agreement. The parties recognize that their products may not be identical, but need only meet the above criteria.

B. Licensing and Fees

No license is granted under the patents, know-how, tradesecrets or any other technology of any party to this Agreement either expressly or by implication or by estoppel. Each of the MSA parties have agreed that licenses to all required intellectual property will be made available to all interested parties under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions applicable to that MSA party. Individual parties to this Agreement may have patents, which they believe may be relevant to this Agreement. The MSA parties should be contacted individually to determine if they have patent rights, which they believe may be pertinent to this Agreement. Each party is free to seek technology or other exchanges with other firms in order to support its activities under this Agreement.