I received an email from Ry Schwark of Mentor about the suit they filed against EVE. The relatively short email gives some additional news about the background.

Ry states that:

"Mentor has over 100 patents issued and 40 more pending on emulation technologies. These patents represent a significant investment from the company and an important asset of our shareholders. We have an obligation to defend that intellectual property and to receive fair value for it." It is true that the company has a fiduciary responsibility to protect stockholders' investments. Thus if they decided to take action, they must have felt that the value of the company would be diminished unless the patent were protected.

Ry continues: "We offered to license the entire emulation patent portfolio to them, an offer they declined. They did, however, license some of our patents in emulation so clearly they acknowledge the strength of our patents in emulation." To me this sounds like as a generalization. Just because some patents are worthy of being licensed, it does not necessarily mean that all similar patents are either enforceable or worthy of being licensed. Of course what Ry writes, will be the initial Mentor position.

We have, therefore, commenced two actions against them. First, we filed a claim with the Japanese customs office. The Japanese customs office will review the claim and if they find for us will bar the importation of Eve products into Japan. We also filed a patent infringement suit in US federal court in Oregon. That suit seeks damages and to bar their products’ manufacture and sale in the US. I did not know that the Japan suit had been followed by an even stronger suit in the US. I still wonder about the sequence: as I stated before, something precipitated what seemed a hastily filed suit in Japan.

I am traveling and my access to email is limited. But I will look further into the subject as soon as I can.