General Scanning Announces Decision On Patent Litigation
WATERTOWN, Mass., June 4 /PRNewswire/ -- General Scanning Inc. (NASDAQ:GSCN) today announced that the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has issued its decision in an action concerning alleged patent infringement brought by Robotic Vision Systems, Inc. ("RVSI", NASDAQ:ROBV) against View Engineering, Inc. ("View").
The Court found infringement based on a particular method of measuring substrate coplanarity of unpopulated ball grid array ("BGA") packages. RVSI had previously dropped all claims for damages; hence, no damages were awarded. The Court determined that View had not willfully infringed and therefore refused RVSI's claim for attorneys' fees. The Court enjoined View from infringing or inducing infringement of the patent in question.
Most of View's inspection systems are either installed outside of the United States, where the patent does not apply, or are used by domestic customers in a manner which does not involve the method described in the patent. Nevertheless, View has developed and will implement a software change whereby the Company believes its systems will operate outside of the RVSI patent, with no sacrifice in system accuracy, speed or throughput. General Scanning does not believe that this ruling will have a material effect upon the consolidated operations of the Company.
View Engineering was a private company when RVSI initiated this action in April, 1996. General Scanning acquired View in August, 1996. Previously, beginning in 1995, RVSI sued View for patent infringement in three separate suits relating to ten different patents. Subsequently, RVSI voluntarily withdrew its claims relating to five of these patents. In 1996, View was granted summary judgment with respect to three of the patents and was also awarded costs and attorney fees under Rule 11. In July 1997, the summary judgment decision in favor of View was upheld and affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. With this current ruling, only one of the ten original patents at issue remains. The trial relating to this one remaining patent is scheduled for later this year. Finally, General Scanning intends to vigorously pursue the collection of all Rule 11 sanctions awarded to View by the District Court in the earlier patent suit.
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