The whole rationale behind this company comes from the work of the chief scientist: Dr Geoffrey Taylor and his associated scientists. No Geoff Taylor means no POET and no money. Dr Taylor's background is in materials and semiconductors and an awareness of Silicon's eventual limitations. It has been pointed out in Joel's submission thas GaAs has long been known to be a more suitable material for rapid processing and was, at one time, thought to be the material of choice. It has been used widely for specific purposes and continues to be used. I believe it was not more widely used for the reason that during the development of Silicon it was very cheap, and so open to future improvement, that why change it became the received concept. This applied over the last 50 years or so since Moore's Law was uttered (Gordon Moore was a co-founder of Intel and wrote a paper in 1965 outlining a doubling of transistor densities on Silicon every 2 years). This process still continues but at escalating cost and significantly slower development such that cost will overwhelm advantage in due course, e.g. 5 to 10 years.

Dr Taylor sits on the BoD and must be intimately involved in the current discussions for this process known to us as monetisation. My experience of able indeed brilliant scientists is that of overwhelming interest in the academic progress of their area of investigation and while I would not doubt a financial interest, his motives will have a strongly scientific interest as well. He also has a duty to the academic fellow reasearchers that, as a professor in the University of Conneticut, will be in his charge.

The skills required for monetisation are very different from those that develop and investigate microprocessors. This could, therfore, be a potential area of conflict and will require very careful handling.

Consider the difference between licensing and a buyout in these circumstances. What would his position be on such matters. In licensing, he will have a much larger input into the future and so would any potential heirs of his position. It has huge potential for future research and it would be under his control. If revenues are as large as we anticipate could not a huge research facility be funded. A buyout could give him promises but less likely to be open ended for others around him or who follow him.

I ask others to consider this area of potential conflict when advocating ideas. A buyout can mean quick bucks for investors and huge temptation but could be academically punishing. Licensing can mean slower devlopment, I suspect, though with the potential of huge annual revenues further down the line and greater board input into other developments. Sometimes there are other considerations than just the share value in 3 months.

David