All's Fair in Love & Patent Disputes

Electronic News, July 9, 2001

TWO COMPANIES IN THE HARDWARE-ASSISTED VERIFICATION marketplace looking to merge and not a single patent-infringement lawsuit lurking somewhere? Not likely. Aart de Geus, chairman and chief executive officer of Synopsys Inc., Mountain View, Calif., is going to get even more familiar with the myriad technological turf battles being waged in emulation as he goes about acquiring Ikos Systems Inc.

of San Jose over the next 14 months (see "Synopsys Buying Ikos," page one). de Geus and Ikos CEO Ramon Nunez both told analysts last week that they did not see any merger impact coming from the Ikos v. Axis Systems Inc. and Axis v. Ikos patent-infringement cases. But Mike Tsai, CEO of Axis, seems to be gearing up to make an impact. "Actually, (Ikos) is violating a very fundamental patent of ours ... and this intention of merging with some other simulation (Synopsys' VCS ) may have a really strong implication there. In fact, (Ikos is) trying to do that already with the 15M (Ikos' newest emulator); that's their future dir ection. In order to execute their roadmap, they have to deal with this patent," Tsai said. However, Ikos (nasdaq: IKOS) as part of Synopsys (nasdaq: SNPS) could have new patent ammunition--related not to emulation but to HDL simulation--with which to battle Axis. "Our own simulator, Xsim, is just like a VCS; it's a compiled software simulator," said Tsai when asked if Axis can offer customers an integrated simulation and emulation package as Synopsys plans to do. But how much "just like a VCS" remains the question.