Oclaro Becomes the First Manufacturer to Offer Lifetime Warranties for Its Clarity(TM) Fluorescence Filters

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oclaro, Inc. (Nasdaq: OCLR), a provider of optical components for industrial applications, today announced that it will provide lifetime warranties for all of its Clarity™ Fluorescence filters used in biomedical applications.  Demonstrating superior reliability and robustness, Oclaro Clarity filters have been incorporated into thousands of systems and have continued to provide excellent performance after many years of operation.  Customers rely on Oclaro for this exceptional reliability as well as for its industry-leading ultra-steep edges that enable superior accuracy and throughput.

"Oclaro has had remarkable reliability on its filters and after achieving zero failures in 65 billion hours of field use, we are very confident to offer our customers the only lifetime warranty in the industry," said Yves LeMaitre, Executive Vice President and Division Manager at Oclaro.   "We take great pride in being able to maintain this industry-leading reliability while also continuing to deliver powerful filters that enhance the performance of instruments used in the life sciences market."

About Oclaro Clarity Fluorescence Filters

Oclaro Clarity fluorescence filters are used in biomedical applications such as clinical diagnostics, drug discovery, gene quantification, blood analysis, and disease detection.  These applications demand very-high throughput and accuracy rates while at the same time maintaining reliability of the instrumentation.  Oclaro has been able to meet those needs by taking advantage of its extensive expertise in filter design and using leading-edge manufacturing capabilities that provide the highest level of reliability and robustness.

• Reliability:  By manufacturing hard-coated filters using a proprietary reactive high-energy magnetron sputtering process known as AED (Advanced Energetic Deposition), Oclaro has achieved exceptional reliability.  Oclaro hard-coated filters have been subjected to rigorous environmental testing including: MIL-C-48497A as well as Telcom GR-1221 standard and show no performance degradation.
• Industry-Leading Capabilities:  Oclaro filters include industry-leading ultra-steep edges (<0.2% of center wavelength from 93% to 0.0001% transmission or OD6) that enable customers to use a host of densely spaced fluorescent labels and clearly distinguish each of them.  This is a major competitive advantage for instruments designed for multi-color assays by enabling higher number labels to be used and minimizing background noise as well as crosstalk between the channels.  This leads to more accurate and more rapid analysis of multi-color assays.
• Proven and Field Tested:  Clarity Filters have been designed into some of the largest manufacturers of flow cytometers and real-time PCR systems.  Oclaro has delivered hundreds of thousands of Clarity filters for bio-analytical instruments used in clinical diagnostics, large pharmaceuticals, and R&D labs around the world.  
• Wide Portfolio: Oclaro filters deliver high-performance band pass filters, dichroic mirrors, and laser beam combiners for bioanalytical applications, and for demanding submarine applications for the telecommunications industry.

About Oclaro

Oclaro, Inc., with headquarters in San Jose, Calif., is a tier-one provider of high-performance optical components, modules and subsystems to the telecommunications market, and is one of the largest providers to metro and long-haul network applications. The company, formed on April 27, 2009 following the combination of Bookham, Inc. and Avanex Corporation, leverages proprietary core technologies and vertically integrated product development to provide its customers with cost-effective and innovative optical devices, modules and subsystems.  Oclaro serves a broad customer base, combining in-house and outsourced manufacturing to maximize flexibility and drive improved gross margin. Its photonic technologies also serve selected high-growth markets, including industrial, defense, life sciences, medical and scientific, with diversification providing both significant revenue streams and strategic technological advantage.  The company also provides a complete family of wavelength selective switches (WSS) capable of powering reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) applications over the entire optical network, from the edge to the core.

Oclaro is a global company, with cutting-edge chip fabrication facilities in the U.K., Switzerland and Italy, and in Tucson, Ariz. during the transition of related activities to Europe, and manufacturing sites in the U.S., Thailand and China.

Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. Oclaro, the Oclaro logo, Clarity and certain other Oclaro trademarks and logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Oclaro, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the US and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.  Information in this product release is subject to change without notice.

Editor Notes:

1. Photonics West will take place January 23-28, 2010, in San Francisco, Calif.
2. Oclaro will be exhibiting at the Photonics West exhibition at booth #1101
3. To arrange an interview with representatives of Oclaro before or during the show, please contact Erika Powelson at +1 (408) 332-5877 or [email protected]

SOURCE Oclaro, Inc.