Patent Office Issues Non-Final Office Action in ESI Patent Reexamination
PR Newswire, Thursday, August 03, 2000 at 17:46
PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:ESIO) announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a non-final first office action in its reexamination of ESI's U.S. Patent 5,265,114 entitled "System and Method for Selectively Laser Processing a Target Structure of One or More Materials of a Multimaterial, Multilayer Device" ('114 patent). This action by the Patent Office states that some of the claims of the '114 patent are unpatentable.
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ESI disagrees with this action by the Patent Office, and will now have the opportunity under Patent Office procedures to respond to the Patent Office and assert the patentability of the claims.
In April 1999, a federal court jury in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California upheld the claims in suit of the '114 patent and awarded ESI a $13.1 million damage judgment for patent infringement by General Scanning Inc. of the '114 patent (Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. v. General Scanning Inc., No. C-96-4268 SBA). These claims were among those found unpatentable by the Patent Office in its non-final first office action in the current reexamination proceeding.
General Scanning Inc. merged with Lumonics Inc. of Kanata, Ontario on March 22, 1999 to form GSI Lumonics Inc. (NASDAQ:GLSI).
As previously reported in November 1999, the request for reexamination of the '114 patent was made by General Scanning's legal counsel. Separately, General Scanning has filed its appeal of the U.S. District Court judgment with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The appeal is pending.
The pendency of the reexamination proceeding and of General Scanning's appeal to the Federal Circuit does not affect the U.S. District Court's permanent injunction prohibiting General Scanning Inc., and its subsidiaries and parent corporations from "making, using, selling or offering for sale in the United States memory repair systems equipped with 1.3 micron lasers, including, but not limited to, General Scanning's M320 and M325 systems with 1.3 micron lasers, 'upgrade kits' which include 1.3 micron lasers, and colorable variations of these memory repair systems and upgrade kits which infringe" the claims in suit of ESI's '114 patent.
Statements in this press release may include forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to materially differ, either better or worse, from those discussed. Such risks and uncertainties are numerous and are identified in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and interim reports on Form 10-Q.
About ESI
ESI, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, designs and manufactures sophisticated products used around the world in electronics manufacturing including: laser manufacturing systems for semiconductor yield improvement; production and test equipment for the manufacture of surface mount ceramic capacitors; laser trim systems for precise electrical tuning of circuits; precision laser and mechanical drilling systems for electronic interconnection; and machine vision systems. Electro Scientific Industries is traded on the Nasdaq National Market System under the symbol, "ESIO." ESI's web site is esi.com .
SOURCE Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. |
