At this time, for the purposes of maintaining and reinforcing the production of a variety of copper alloy strips for leadframes; Furukawa Electric Company Ltd. (written hereon as 'Furukawa') - Head office: Chiyoda -ku, Tokyo, Capital: 56.7 billion, President: Mr. J. Furukawa and Hitachi Cable Ltd. (written hereon as 'HCL') - Head office: Chiyoda - ku, Tokyo, Capital: 25.9 billion, President: Mr. S. Hara have signed a patent license agreement which allows HCL access to Furukawa's industrial property and copper alloy manufacturing information related to copper alloy strips for leadframes.

The key object of this contract is Furukawa's copper alloy strip for leadframes: 'EFTEC-64T'. The 'EFTEC-64T', as a high conductivity and high strengthening copper alloy, is mainly used as the QFP package material needed for Micro-computer IC and Logic IC use. Recently Furukawa have manufactured and sold 500 tons per a month. Following the promotion of large scale integration and high speed IC's, demand for the high conductivity and high strengthening of leadframe copper alloy material has also started to increase. The superb efficiency of the 'EFTEC-64T' has been widely acclaimed and future growth of this copper alloy is expected. Up to now, only Furukawa has manufactured and sold the 'EFTEC-64T', but multi-source demand from users has quickly increased, so Furukawa has needed to respond to it quickly.

On the other hand, HCL has been actively involved in the development of various a high conductivity and high strengthening copper alloy strips, but for the purposes of responding quickly to and answering the multi source demands of this buoyant market, we have decided to reconsider our independent material development methods.

The signing of this contract will be mutually beneficial. With the possibility of widespread promotion of Furukawa's 'EFTEC-64T' and HCL being able to enrich their copper alloy for leadframes line up - merits are expected for both companies.

After receiving technical cooperation from Furukawa over the 'EFTEC-64T' we will aim to have product samples distributed and plans for mass production prepared by April this year.