If you listened hard you might have heard a thin scream of despair as holographic storage developer InPhase Technologies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday.

Bart Stuck, of Signal Lake, the venture capital fund that owns the assets of InPhase, has been struggling to keep the company alive after his VC snapped up its remains in March last year. InPhase closed down its Longmont, Colorado, facility in February of the same year.

As we reported at the time, InPhase's two VC owners, Acadia Woods Partners and majority stake-holder Signal Lake were involved in a struggle to auction off its assets (Acadia's hope) or try again to keep it afloat (Signal Lake's approach) which went to court, and from which Signal Lake emerged victorious.

The money overview, as reported in the Denver Business Journal, is that InPhase raised $94m in five funding rounds, has an estimated asset value of $50m to $100m and has debts of $2.08m, with the largest creditor being a Denver law firm.

Some of the history is recounted here. As recently as last month El Reg had heard that there were still reasonable prospects of InPhase starting up again.

These hopes still exist as Chapter 11 is a process from which companies can emerge, hopefully in better condition than when they entered. Let's hope this is the case for InPhase and that Chapter 11 is a fresh start rather than its closing chapter. ®