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This is something Mentor really did not need. Overnight Mentor now finds itself on the defense from a highly skilled, extremely well financed legal team who is accustomed to winning cases, no matter how long it takes. But it is also clear that the legal suit was putting financial pressure on EVE, a company that is about 16 times smaller than Mentor in annual revenue. Clearly, as I just stated, the emulation technology patent field is immersed in fog. Given the patent situation, it would not be accurate to define the Mentor legal activity as simply a way to create disturbance in the emulation market and inject doubts in present and potential EVE customers. Mentor started the legal activity by protecting only the Japanese market at first, and later expanded the proceedings to cover more patents and the entire world market.
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This fact is one of the clear indications that our patent law has stopped growing with the invention of the spokes of the wheel. The problem is simple: emulation requires fundamental techniques that cannot be “paraphrased” and still achieve emulation. I have written more than once that the emulation market is plagued with legal wrangling going back to the times of Intergraph, IKOS, and Quickturn. Thus the fact that Synopsys filed a Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief against Mentor Graphics on the subject of the legal proceedings that Mentor initiated months ago against EVE is an indication that Synopsys now would be materially damaged by the legal battle in the emulation business. It is not possible for a party to sue another party unless the first party has a material reason for the legal action. In a strange twist of reality I learned of the proposed acquisition of EVE by Synopsys because of a legal maneuver by Synopsys.