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Technology Stocks : Avant (AVNT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric Klein who wrote (1776)	12/20/1997 4:43:00 PM
From: Investor-ex!	Respond to of 3441

Eric, I think it's a huge victory for CDN to be allowed to examine the source code. I very much agree! The last thing you would ever, ever, ever want is for your prime software competitor to have complete access to your most valuable asset -- your proprietary source code -- under court order, no less. This is more or less a de facto admission by the court that AVNT doesn't have a leg to stand on. The fact that the court freely grants CDN this right reflects the court's unstated opinion that most of this code is CDN's anyway. Remember, this is the source code for their supposed "new" products, Aquarius and Apollo. The first thing CDN's engineers will do is attempt to compile this code. If it doesn't compile, they'll know that AVNT is playing games with the court order by turning over doctored or false source code. If the source compiles but the compiled objects do not represent the current Aquarius release functionally, they'll go back to the court with further proof that AVNT is hiding the truth. Furthermore, no amount of name-changing or rearranging can ever hide the fundamental structure of the critical algorithms in a circuit layout and design product. If this code is stolen and then renamed (twice!), no shell game on earth will hide this fact. I think the court has pretty much already decided this case and is simply going through the motions for the sake of thoroughness and impartiality.

To: Eric Klein who wrote (1776)	12/20/1997 5:12:00 PM
From: Pancho Villa	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3441

Eric>>I believe that this was a big victory for CDN. << I agree! I just worry about future victories. I have seen crooks get away with murder frequently. The key here is that AVNT did not have the time effort to do a good job with the source code. Smart people going over the code and getting a full understanding of the logic could even improve on CDN's code and introduce significant changes on design. for example they could go from a procedural language like C based on functions to an object oriented design (i.e., C++ for which the design unit is an object with imbeded functions). However, I agree with you they probably went for the easy fast fix of just dressing uo the code a bit. I am not developing right now but I have implemented my descrete event simulation models myself, using first C and then C++, working with developing teams in which other people would design the GUI, database etc. and I designed the guts (engine for the model). Since AVNT has been proven guity before I do hope they won't get away with murder. Pancho