Patent ruling removes cloud over machine vision.

On Jan. 23, the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas ruled in favor of Cognex Corp., Natick, Mass., 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 or users of Cognex products.

Cognex, a leading supplier of machine-vision systems, filed suit against the Lemelson Partnership in Sept. 1998, seeking to invalidate patents issued to the late Jerome Lemelson that purported to cover machine vision. In 2000, the Court combined Cognex's lawsuit with a similar suit against the Lemelson Partnership by Symbol Technologies, Holtsville, N.Y., and seven other manufacturers of bar code readers.

According to a Cognex statement. the late Mr. Lemelson and the Lemelson Partnership--neither of which ever built or sold vision systems or bar code readers--have collected mere than $1.5 billion in license fees since the late 1990s with the threat of costly patent litigation against hundreds of companies around the world that use machine vision or bar code readers. As a result of this court ruling, Cognex stated, "Every company will now be able to use machine vision systems and bar code readers without the threat of litigation from the Lemelson Partnership and without having to pay licensing fees to them." The complete text of the court's decision can be found at Cognex's website, www.cognex.com.