That was a wonderful post, but we need to clear up about naming the tier 1. Management succinctly answered why, but I thought I would post another analogy in support of management's response.

You said, "b) Some gamesmanship on why they can't name their industry partners. Yes, the established North American players haven't signed off on any publicity in their relationship with POET but if those players bring an optical interposer-enabled product to market, they will want to announce what makes that product unique and why it gives them a competitive advantage. At that time, they will announce their involvement with POET (and in my opinion that will spur an acquisition of the company -- too much consolidation in the industry for this not to happen)."

As we all know, Poet is designed on a platform and from that platform comes out a piece that gets incorporated into a customer's product. Take a company that makes food products, like Frito-Lay potato chips. As you know, their chips come in different flavours. Does it say anywhere on the label that they get flavors or food colors from a company such as International Flavors or some other company? You will find that answer to be know. But the snack foods industry competitors probably know from a short list of companies that they use. They might even be using the same company for the food color or artificial (natural) flavors put into their food products. So as much as we would like to know who the tier 1 is, the company that sells the complete food product is not required to disclose that. It might label something like artificial or natural flavors in the ingredients, but no company name.

Monolithic