Court denies Synopsys’ attempts to halt patent re-examination
Magma Design Automation Inc. has announced that a U.S. district court's decision in the patent litigation between Magma and Synopsys Inc. denied Synopsys' requests to halt the re-examination process of one of the patents at issue.
"Synopsys proposed remedies to the court that would have stood in the way of the patent office's re-examination of the patents, but the remedy in today's ruling permits the re-examination process to continue on its normal schedule," said David Stanley, Magma's corporate vice president, Corporate Affairs. "The discovery process has revealed that the patents in question are likely invalid, so Synopsys' claims of infringement have no merit."
The order requires Magma to assign title to U.S. Patents 6,453,446 and 6,725,438 (the '446 and '438 patents) to Synopsys so it can participate in the re-examination conducted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The '446 and '438 patents are two of three patents at issue in the companies' litigation pending before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in a case that began in 2004, and re-examination has been requested for all three patents.
The PTO announced in November that it will re-examine the '438 patent, and it will determine by Feb. 10, 2007 whether to re-examine the '446 patent. The third patent at issue in this litigation, U.S. Patent Number 6,378,114 (the '114 patent), is the subject of a separate re-examination in which all the claims were rejected last year by the PTO, and Magma filed an additional request for re-examination of the '114 patent on Dec. 22, 2006.
From April through June, the court conducted a trial focusing on ownership of the three patents. In that trial Magma argued that if Synopsys has any interest in the patents, that interest derives from a joint development project with IBM and that IBM therefore shares ownership in the patents. The court has yet to render its decision on ownership. The order specifically stated "This order is not intended to reflect a determination as to any rights IBM may have in the subject patents."
