Are EVE and Mentor heading to war?

Written by Brian Bailey July 22, 2010 Hits: 956 Favorites

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All has been quiet on the legal front in the emulation market for several years now. The last time we saw legal trouble it started out with Mentor and Quickturn. Then after Mentor tried to acquire Quickturn, Cadence stepped in and gobbled them up. The battles continued for a while before being settled for a pittance. Then Mentor, contemplating legal problems with IKOS, and just as Synopsys was getting interested in them, decided that the easiest road forward was to acquire them themselves and squeezed Synopsys out. Now it appears as if Mentor has thrown an opening volley towards EVE.

What Mentor has done is to place an import restriction filing for EVE products in Japan – presumably a territory that Mentor wishes to defend and EVE is making inroads into. According to the Mentor press release “The filing requests that Japanese Customs issue a ruling that EVE emulation products infringe Mentor Graphics’ intellectual property. The application also requests that, upon making such a determination, the Japanese Customs Office bar importation of EVE products into Japan.” EVE does not believe that they infringe on any of Mentor’s patents according to Luc Bergun, EVE’s CEO and president, but then he has to say that. In addition, EVE says that as yet they have not even been informed by Mentor as to which patent they are supposedly infringing.

So, can we expect a bunch of lawyers to start getting rich? That is all that has happened in the past. Of course one side or the other may want me as an expert witness, as happened last time and put some money in my pocket. Hmmm. Somehow I doubt it as everything will be going on in Japan this time around.

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Brian Bailey