Agere Systems
Agere Systems, Inc. was an integrated circuit components company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA. Spun out of Lucent Technologies in 2002, Agere was merged into LSI Corporation in 2007. LSI was in turn acquired by Avago Technologies in 2014. In early 2016, Avago acquired the former Broadcom Corporation, and took on the name Broadcom Inc. Agere was incorporated on August 1, 2000 as a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies and then spun off on June 1, 2002. The name "Agere" was that of a Texas-based electronics company that Lucent had acquired in 2000, although the pronunciations of the  company names are different. The Texas company was pronounced with three syllables and a hard "g": . The company name was pronounced with two syllables and a hard "g": . Apart from the main office in Allentown, the company also maintained offices and facilities in: Microsoft sued for alleged theft of IP. Microsoft was sued by Agere for theft of key technology used in Internet telephony. The allegations concern meetings between Agere and Microsoft in 2002 and 2003, where the companies discussed selling Agere's stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation technology to Microsoft. This technology is used to improve the sound of telephone  and teleconference communications over the Internet (i.e., VOIP). Just before the agreement was to be signed, Microsoft ended the discussions saying that it made a significant breakthrough in its own, heretofore undisclosed research program, and no longer needed Agere's technology.