District Court imposes injunction against The MathWorks Inc.

OCTOBER 15--National Instruments (Austin, TX; www.ni.com) announced that the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has permanently enjoined The MathWorks from manufacturing and shipping its Simulink products that were found to infringe three National Instruments patents. The injunction was originally entered in June 2003 by US District Judge T. John Ward as part of the judgment in favor of National Instruments following a January 2003 jury trial and was stayed pending appeal by The MathWorks.

In September 2004, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit disposed of The MathWorks appeal in favor of National Instruments, affirming Judge Ward's judgment in all respects. The District Court has now lifted the stay and put the injunction in force.

"Although The MathWorks stated its intention to abide by the decision of the court, it is National Instruments' position that the new Service Pack recently introduced by The MathWorks continues to infringe these patents," said David Hugley, NI vice president and general counsel. "We will continue to protect our patent rights by asking the court to hold The MathWorks in contempt for violating the injunction by selling these infringing products."

National Instruments continues to offer the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, www.ni.com/simulation, which adds the LabVIEW user interface to the Simulink environment. With the LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit, design engineers can use LabVIEW-based user interfaces to instrument and verify their control models. The toolkit gives The MathWorks customers a licensed manner to control and view Simulink data under these National Instruments patents.