Decision Affirms Jury Verdict in Favor of National Instruments Finding Infringement by Simulink and Related ProductsSept. 7, 2004 – National Instruments today announced that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed the judgment of infringement of three National Instruments patents by Massachusetts-based The MathWorks, Inc. The patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 4,901,221; 4,914,568; and 5,301,336, relate to National Instruments LabVIEW software, which contains major innovations in programming design tools. A fourth patent, No. 5,291,587, was found valid but not infringed.In June 2003, the Honorable T. John Ward of the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division) upheld the jury’s January 2003 verdict finding validity and infringement of National Instruments’ patents, and issued an order forbidding the sale of The MathWorks Simulink software product once any appeal has been disposed of in favor of National Instruments. “We are pleased that the Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict,” said David Hugley, NI vice president and general counsel. “LabVIEW has had a revolutionary impact on scientists and engineers with its innovative virtual instrumentation approach. We have invested heavily in the intellectual property in LabVIEW and the Court of Appeals ruling further protects and validates our intellectual property.”National Instruments continues to offer the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, which adds the LabVIEW user interface to the Simulink environment. With the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, design engineers can use LabVIEW-based user interfaces to intuitively control and view data within their control models. The toolkit gives The MathWorks customers a licensed manner to control and view Simulink data under these National Instruments patents.The final royalty damages will be recorded in the financial statements of the company after the issuance of the Court of Appeals written mandate and the release of the escrow. The company anticipates using a significant portion of the proceeds to fund academic research and classroom projects for improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. About National InstrumentsNational Instruments (www.ni.com) is a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation – a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists approach measurement and automation. Leveraging the PC and its related technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs through easy-to-integrate software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, and modular hardware, such as PXI modules for data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,100 employees and direct operations in 41 countries. In 2003, the company sold products to more than 25,000 companies in 90 countries. For the past five years, FORTUNE magazine named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.
Did you enjoy this great article?
Check out our free e-newsletters to read more great articles..
