District Court Imposes Injunction Against The MathWorks, Inc. Simulink®
National Instruments announced today that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has permanently enjoined The MathWorks from manufacturing and shipping its Simulink products that were found to infringe three National Instruments patents. The injunction was originally entered in June 2003 by U.S. District Judge T. John Ward as part of the judgment in favor of National Instruments following a January 2003 jury trial and was stayed pending appeal by The MathWorks.
In September 2004, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit disposed of The MathWorks appeal in favor of National Instruments, affirming Judge Ward’s judgment in all respects. The District Court has now lifted the stay and put the injunction in force.
“Although The MathWorks stated its intention to abide by the decision of the court, it is National Instruments’ position that the new Service Pack recently introduced by The MathWorks continues to infringe these patents,” said David Hugley, NI vice president and general counsel. “We will continue to protect our patent rights by asking the court to hold The MathWorks in contempt for violating the injunction by selling these infringing products.”
National Instruments continues to offer the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, www.ni.com/simulation, which adds the LabVIEW user interface to the Simulink environment. With the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, design engineers can use LabVIEW-based user interfaces to instrument and verify their control models. The toolkit gives The MathWorks customers a licensed manner to control and view Simulink data under these National Instruments patents.
About National Instruments
National Instruments (www.ni.com ) is a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation – a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging the PC and its related technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs through easy-to-integrate software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, and modular hardware, such as PXI modules for data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,100 employees and direct operations in 41 countries. In 2003, the company sold products to more than 25,000 companies in 90 countries. For the past five years, FORTUNE magazine named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.
