Las Vegas, January 27, 2004. The U.S. District Court in Las Vegas has issued a ruling in favor of Cognex in its lawsuit against the Lemelson Partnership. Chief Judge Philip Pro held that the claims of 14 patents asserted by the Lemelson Partnership are invalid and unenforceable, and not infringed by Cognex. The complete text of the decision can be found at: www.cognex.com .

Since the early 1990s, the late Jerome Lemelson and the Lemelson Partnership, which never built or sold a single vision system or bar code reader, have collected in excess of $1.5 billion in license fees by asserting their patent portfolio and the threat of complex and costly patent litigation against hundreds of companies around the world that use machine vision or bar code readers. As a result of Friday's ruling, every company will now be able to use machine vision systems and bar code readers, anywhere in their operations, without the threat of litigation from the Lemelson Partnership, and without having to pay licensing fees to them.

This ruling is a cause for celebration for both Cognex and users of machine vision systems and bar code readers around the world. Dr. Robert J.
Shillman, Chairman and CEO of Cognex commented on this landmark decision:

"Much of the litigation in our society is motivated by greed, but that was not
Cognex's reason for suing Lemelson," Dr. Shillman said. "Cognex has spent millions of dollars on this case, and even though we won, we won't receive a single cent from Lemelson. We pursued this litigation because we knew that what Lemelson and his Partnership were doing was terribly wrong, and only Cognex had both the technical knowledge and the fortitude to put an end to their campaign of legalized extortion. Our only reward is the knowledge that we did the right thing?we stood up to wrongdoing and we triumphed. Our success in this case is a testament to two of Cognex's core values: Integrity and Perseverance... we do the right thing, and we don't quit until the job is finished."

"By determining that the Lemelson patents are invalid and unenforceable, the U.S. District Court has done a great service to the patent process, and it has lifted the hearts of the thousands of true inventors who patent inventions that are then perfected and brought to market for the benefit of both the inventor and society," Dr. Shillman concluded.

Laser Focus World

Tue Jan 27 09:49:00 CST 2004