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Lumera Awarded Sixth Patent for Optical Modulators; Patented Design Reduces Optical Loss in High-Volume Manufacturing

Lumera Corporation (NASDAQ: LMRA), an emerging leader in the field of nanotechnology, announced today it received its sixth United States patent for its Optical Modulator design. The new patented design reduces optical loss and increases reliability of optical transmissions while allowing for high-volume manufacturing.

This latest patent, titled "Multi-layer Electro-optic Polymers Modulators with Reduced Optical Coupling Loss," joins Lumera's growing intellectual property portfolio directed at a broad range of markets including high-speed telecommunications, biotechnology and proteomics, and wireless networking. The patent number is 6,895,162.

"This new modulator with reduced coupling loss was made possible by our unique abilities to custom produce materials and integrate them into critical networking devices," said Lumera CEO Tom Mino. "Currently, we are the only company that has the facilities and the people to realize such an effort, and we continue to raise the entry barrier by patenting in all areas of the technology."

Optical loss is a crucial performance consideration for telecommunications and data networks due to the high cost of generating optical signals from lasers. Previous efforts have been attempted to address this loss; however, none were reliable in high-volume manufacturing. The new optical modulator design patented by Lumera achieves both objectives: reduction of optical loss and reliability in high-volume manufacturing.

Lumera's new design reduces the optical loss of electro-optic polymer modulators by reducing the optical fiber-to-modulator coupling loss. Previous efforts to improve the high coupling loss involved "squeezing" light within the optical fiber to match the narrow cross sections of the light in the electro-optic polymer modulator.

The techniques required to fabricate device parts that squeeze the light have very low fault tolerance and are not reliable, especially in high-volume manufacturing. By increasing the width of the light path, Lumera's new design is able to improve the optical coupling loss while avoiding the fabrication of parts required to squeeze the light of the optical fiber. The new materials and fabrication techniques used to make the new Lumera modulator are the subjects of separate US and international patent applications.

Lumera CEO Tom Mino said, "We continue to have success in addressing all the challenges of electro-optic polymer modulators, and this again validates our approach of combining material and device design for the whole system."

About Lumera

Lumera is an emerging leader in the field of nanotechnology. The company designs proprietary molecular structures and polymer compounds for a broad range of electro-optic, bioscience, RF and specialty nanotechnology applications. The company also has developed proprietary processes for fabricating such devices. For more information, please visit http://www.lumera.com/.

Certain statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the company's forward-looking statements include the following: market acceptance of our technologies and products; our ability to obtain financing; our financial and technical resources relative to those of our competitors; our ability to keep up with rapid technological change; government regulation of our technologies; our ability to enforce our intellectual property rights and protect our proprietary technologies; the ability to obtain additional contract awards and to develop partnership opportunities; the timing of commercial product launches; the ability to achieve key technical milestones in key products; and other risk factors identified from time to time in the company's SEC reports, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.

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