Cadence Design Systems has once again gone to the courts over its long-running dispute with its rival Avant! This time Cadence says it has new evidence that Fremont, California-based Avant’s Aquarius product line, now superseded by the newer Apollo system, infringes the copyright and trade secrets relating to its own Design Framework II product. Cadence asked the court to extend a preliminary injunction order already in place against an even older product, ArcCell, to include the Aquarius product line. The evidence of copyright infringement and trade secret theft against Aquarius is as compelling as it was against ArcCell, so we are optimistic the Court will treat it similarly and remove it from the market said Cadence president and CEO Jack Harding. Cadence claims to have spent a further six months of technical analysis on Aquarius, and found evidence of literal copying of ordinary unrestricted English text from Cadence’s code into the Aquarius software. Cadence wants the civil case to go ahead as quickly as possible, and has asked the Court to lift a stay it imposed while a parallel criminal case against Avant and six of its executives proceeds – a process not likely to proceed to trial this century, it said. Cadence estimates it will suffer direct damages of $600m through 1999 as a result of lost sales of plate-and-route products, other related products and services. Adding an equal amount in punitive damages, Cadence calculates that, if its case is successful, Avant! will be financially liable for an amount over $1.5bn. It is worried that, with only $129m in cash assets on hand it is extremely unlikely that Avant will be able to pay a damage award if [its] infringement is allowed to continue unchecked. Avant immediately issued a statement calling the claims the same kind of baseless charges that Cadence has been making for months. We will continue to refute these charges and we remain confident [we] will prevail in the courtroom once the facts are presented. This case is about Cadence trying to harass Avant in the courtroom because Avant is winning fair and square in the marketplace.
