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Mentor , Quickturn Settle Patent Infringement Battle San Jose-Mentor Graphics Corp. and Quickturn Design Systems Inc. last week settled their two-year legal battle over emulation hardware patents. The parties agreed that five U.S. patents held by Quickturn were valid and infringed by Mentor's sale of SimExpress emulation products in the United States. Mentor is permanently enjoined from producing, marketing or selling Simxpress systems in the United States, but the injunction doesn't apply outside this country. The consent judgment was reached by both parties during the jury trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The trial began on June 9. Mentor Graphics, based in Wilsonville, Ore., also agreed to pay Quickturn $3 million as part of the settlement. The settlement was actually finalized a few weeks ago, but the judge on the case had been ill and unable to approve the announcement, the spokesman also said. Mentor first sought the invalidation of the Quickturn's patents in late 1996. San Jose-based Quickturn countered with its own suit for patent infringement, asking for more than $200 million in damages. Quickturn estimated that its legal costs averaged $1 million per quarter in 1997. Partly to resolve the legal battle, Mentor Graphics attempted a hostile takeover of Quickturn late last year. The takeover attempt later failed when Cadence Design Systems and Quickturn agreed to merge. Mentor subsequently dropped its acquisition efforts. Had the companies completed the trial, Ray Bingham, Cadence president and chief executive officer, said he believed that Cadence/Quickturn could have gotten a larger monetary settlement. However, they got what they were looking for, which was to have the business affirmed, he said. "If Mentor wants to compete in the U.S. market, they must do it so that the patents are not infringed upon," said Keith Lobo, senior vice president of Cadence Design Systems and CEO of Quickturn. Mentor sells its high-end Celaro emulators outside the United States. Celaro has a different architecture than SimExpress, Mentor maintains. |