ITC ruling seems to support MVTec

It looks as though MVTec are edging closer to victory in their patent dispute with Cognex. On July 16th ALJ Charneski of the US International Trade Commission (USITC) issued a ruling to the effect that Halcon machine vision software product doesn’t infringe upon Cognex’s patents 7,016,539 and 7,065,262. He also appears to have said that both patents are invalid as they fail to claim patent-eligible subject matter. (I’m getting my info from the ITCblog.)

The case isn’t over yet; apparently we have to wait until November for a final ruling. If I were a gambling man, I think I’d wager a few bucks on MVTec coming out on top.

Unfortunately for MVTec though, it seems as if the long running dispute has still done them some damage in the US. You may recall that several importers and users of Halcon were also named in the original Cognex complaint, and some of them have already fled the MVTec ship. One wonders if the real purpose of the case was just to cause trouble for a competitor.