A July 27 initial determination by the International Trade Commission (ITC) will keep machine vision manufacturer Cognex Corp. in litigation mode as it pursues three alleged patent infringements by MVtec Software GmbH, which designs standard software for machine-vision applications.

At issue is whether the German software designer, by importing and selling its general-purpose machine vision software HALCON in the United States, violated patent rights held by Cognex. Massachusetts-based Cognex asserts that MVTec’s software does exceed allowable limits for matching technology. The ITC ruled that two of the patents in question were not infringed. Cognex plans to take the matter before the full commission in November.

“For the past 20 years, Cognex has been recognized as the pioneer of the geometric pattern-matching methods which are at the heart of this case,” says Robert Shillman, Ph.D., Cognex’s chairman and CEO. “Our company has invested significant resources to develop this innovative technology, which has brought enormous value to industrial automation worldwide, and we believe we have justly earned the protection granted to us by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.”

Based on the ITC’s favorable ruling, MVTec will continue to sell its software in the United States and is confident the November ruling will go in its favor. “MVTec certainly respects intellectual property rights—up to the point where they turn out to be based on questionable patents,” says Olaf Munkelt Ph.D., MVTec’s managing director. “We will continue to defend ourselves as well as our customers against any complaints that we believe are without any merit.”

Cognex and MVTec have also faced off in U.S. District Court, where the machine vision manufacturer disputes MVTec’s move to distribute software in the United States. “The ITC proceeding is just one path in our battle to vigorously assert our patent rights against MVTec,” says Todd Keebaugh, Cognex’s vice president of legal services. “It has no impact on Cognex’s assertion of five other patents, which is our ongoing case against MVTec in the U.S. District Court. In this regard, we are very pleased that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office carried out a reexamination at MVTec’s request and confirmed the validity of four of those patents. We expect the District Court to issue an injunction and award damages to Cognex for the sale of MVTec’s allegedly infringing software in the United States, and/or sales by any other company that incorporate that software.”

Cognex designs, develops, manufactures, and markets machine-vision sensors and systems used in factories around the world to guide, inspect, gauge, identify, and ensure the quality of a wide range of items during the manufacturing process. MVTec is an international manufacturer of software for machine vision used in the semiconductor, medical, and surveillance industries.