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Significant Agreements
9 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2022
Significant Agreements  
Significant Agreements

8. Significant Agreements

GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Inc. Joint Development Agreement

Since October 17, 2014, the Company has participated in a joint development agreement (JDA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF), a semiconductor foundry, for the joint development of Spin-transfer Torque MRAM (STT-MRAM), technology to produce a family of discrete and embedded MRAM technologies. The term of the agreement is until the completion, termination, or expiration of the last statement of work entered into pursuant to the joint development agreement. The Company entered into a Statement of Work (SOW) and an Amendment to the SOW, under the JDA with GF effective August 2016 and June 2018, respectively. The agreement was extended on December 31, 2019 to include a new phase of support for 12nm MRAM development.

Under the current JDA extension terms, each party licenses its relevant intellectual property to the other party. For certain jointly developed works, the parties have agreed to follow an invention allocation procedure to determine ownership. In addition, GF possesses the exclusive right to manufacture the Company’s discrete and embedded STT-MRAM devices developed pursuant to the agreement until the earlier of three years after the qualification of the MRAM device for a particular technology node or four years after the completion of the relevant statement of work under which the device was developed. For the same exclusivity period associated with the relevant device, GF agreed not to license intellectual property developed in connection with the JDA to named competitors of the Company.

Generally, unless otherwise specified in the agreement or a statement of work, the Company and GF share project costs, which do not include personnel or production qualification costs, under the JDA. If GF manufactures, sells or transfers to customers wafers containing production quantified STT-MRAM devices that utilize certain design information, GF will be required to pay the Company a royalty.

Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. Joint Collaboration Agreement

In September 2018, the Company entered into a Joint Collaboration Agreement (JCA) with Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., and another third party. The JCA will create additional manufacturing capacity for the Company’s Toggle MRAM products. The Company had previously anticipated initial production starting in 2020. However, as a result of recent delays, the Company now anticipates initial production to start some time in 2022. Under the JCA, the Company is required to pay non-recurring engineering costs of $1.0 million. As of September 30, 2021, the Company had paid $600,000 of these JCA costs. On October 23, 2021, the Company executed a termination of the JCA. As a result, the Company does not expect to incur additional JCA costs for the remainder of 2022.