Remarkable events are daily occurrences in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and another was announced Friday, when Cypress Semicondutor Corp signed a licensing letter of intent with Russia’s International Centre for Informatics and Electronics under which Cypress will acquire advanced semiconductor fabrication process technologies and a licence to manufacture semiconductor products designed by Centre. Such products and technologies could include, but are not limited to, chips targeted at high definition television markets, signal processing chips used in telecommunications, audio and video applications, and digital filtering devices used in communications applications. The agreement calls for Cypress to pay royalties and will deposit $100,000 in an escrow account from which royalties can be drawn as they are accrued. Cypress has also joined Econotech, a joint venture of representatives of the Ministries and Enterprise Groups of the Soviet Union with members of US companies, intended to develop business relationships. Econotech has sole rights to technologies and products developed by the Academy of Sciences and other ministries and Cypress gets first refusal on all semiconductor technologies and products from the various ministries.
