Cognex sues Matrox

By Control Engineering Staff July 18, 2002

Natick, Mass . – Cognex Corp . has filed a complaint against Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd . (Dorval, Quebec, Canada). The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston.

Cognex is claiming that the Matrox Geometric Model Finder software, and possibly other components, shipped as part of the company’s Matrox Imaging Library (MIL), infringes claims of at least one Cognex patent. Cognex is seeking action by the court to stop Matrox from making and selling Geometric Model Finder or any other product which is found to infringe Cognex patents. Cognex is also seeking unspecified damages to compensate for the Matrox patent infringement.

“Over the years Cognex has been first to market with a broad range of innovative machine vision technologies, which have made significant contributions to industrial efficiency and product quality worldwide,” said Bill Silver, Cognex’s Chief Technology Officer. “Unfortunately, the commercial success of our innovations has motivated some other machine vision vendors to emulate our technology. I have personally investigated the Matrox Geometric Model Finder and I believe that it infringes claims held by Cognex.”

Matrox Imaging responded that it has become aware of the lawsuit only through the press release and has yet to receive the text of the lawsuit. Its statement in response states, “Matrox invests significantly in R&D and is convinced of the integrity of its intellectual property including its imaging and vision software technology. Matrox is confident that its technology does not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of any of its competitors including Cognex. Matrox believes that the Cognex allegations are without merit and will vigorously contest the lawsuit.”

Control Engineering Daily News DeskGary A. Mintchell, senior editor gmintchell@reedbusiness.com


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