PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 1 -- Electro Scientific Industries Inc. reported that the US Patent and Trademark Office has issued an order granting a request to reexamine ESI's US Patent No.5,265,114, entitled System and Method for Selectively Laser Processing a Target Structure of One or More Materials of a Multimaterial, Multilayer Device . In April 1999, a US District Court jury in the Northern District of California upheld the validity of the ESI patent and awarded the company $13.1 million in damages for patent infringement by General Scanning Inc. General Scanning merged with Lumonics Inc. of Kanata, Ontario, to form GSI Lumonics Inc. on March 22, 1999.
The request for reexamination of the ESI patent was made by legal counsel for General Scanning. General Scanning has also filed its appeal of the US District Court judgment with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit under separate cover. The pending reexamination proceeding and appeal to the Federal Circuit do not affect the US District Court's permanent injunction prohibiting General Scanning and its subsidiaries and parent corporations from making, using, selling or offering for sale in the United States memory repair systems equipped with 1.3-micron lasers, including, but not limited to, General Scanning's M320 and M325 systems with 1.3-micron lasers, 'upgrade kits' which include 1.3-micron lasers, and colorable variations of these memory repair systems and upgrade kits which infringe upon US Patent No. 5,265,114, as claimed in suit of ESI's patent.