Back in June this year Silicon Valley input-interface company Synaptics Inc. acquired North Idaho startup Pacinian. The company has designed very thin and very responsive keypads and input devices.

At the time the purchase price wasn't disclosed.

The latest Synaptics 10-Q lists the price as $15.0 million. But shareholders, including several area venture fund investors, will also stand to get additional returns under some "contingency" events listed in the deal.

Up to $11.9 million more would go to former stockholders based on the number of units using the ThinTouch design that are shipped.  For instance, Synaptics states that $5.0 million will be paid to former Pacinian stockholders upon "customer acceptance of a ThinTouch product," and up to $10.0 milloin of additional consideration based on a "certain rate for each unit shipped" using ThinTouch technology through June 2016.

Our take: let's pull for ThinTouch. Any cash coming here from Synaptics will be a nice bit of stimulus funding.

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