ATMI's Intellectual Property Portfolio Reaches 100 Patents; Intellectual Property and Proprietary Products Generate Majority of Revenue.

DANBURY, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 6, 1998--ATMI, Inc. (Nasdaq:ATMI), today announced it has received its 100th United States patent. ATMI has an additional 16 patents allowed, more than 100 US patents pending, and numerous patent licenses and foreign patents. ATMI received its 50th patent just 3 years ago, and its first patent in 1988, two years after the company was founded. Glenn Tom, one of ATMI's founders, was inventor for both ATMI's 1st and 100th patents. The 100th patent, 5,817,921, is for "Piezoelectric Environmental Fluid Monitoring System and Method".

Gene Banucci, ATMI CEO, said, "More than 90% of ATMI's revenues stem from products covered by our intellectual property. ATMI develops novel solutions to pressing semiconductor industry problems. We patent these solutions while turning them into commercial products. Then we create businesses to market them, and to build market strength around them. We can trace ATMI's success to the growth of each of our businesses from key portions of our intellectual property portfolio."

Glenn Tom, ATMI's Vice-President and Chief Scientist, said, "Commercial success and product profitability are paramount considerations for ATMI's creative scientists and engineers. Our patent filing strategy reflects business decisions based on the technology. Our 100th patent is important to the development of a new ATMI Venture, Q4D."

Oliver Zitzmann, ATMI Chief Patent Counsel said, "It is unusual for such a young company as ATMI to have developed such a large portfolio of intellectual property. Other, much larger, companies - well known for their innovation prowess - are not producing as many patents per employee as is ATMI. IBM, for example, with about 270,000 employees, had nearly 16,000 US patents at the end of 1997; a patent per employee ratio of about .06. ATMI, although considerably smaller with just 450 employees, is likely to have more than 100 patents by year end, giving us a patents per employee ratio of about .22."

ATMI provides products and services for semiconductor device manufacture, including thin film materials and delivery systems marketed through ADCS, environmental equipment marketed through EcoSys, thin film deposition services marketed through Epitronics, sub-atmospheric gas delivery systems marketed through NovaSource, and high-purity materials packaging systems marketed through NOW.

Statements which are not historical information are forward looking, and involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to: changes in semiconductor industry growth or ATMI's markets; competition, problems, or delays developing and commercializing new products, and other factors discussed in ATMI's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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