Cognex, a US corporation, has filed a complaint against MVTec Software GmbH, a German company, MVTec LLC, the US sales and support center of MVTec Software in Boston, MA, and Fuji America Corporation, a US subsidiary of Fuji Machine Mfg. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston, USA.

"One of the important values within business is to understand the concept of fair competition" says Dr. Olaf Munkelt, managing director of MVTec Software GmbH. "Part of these values is to respect intellectual property rights", he adds. "MVTec is ready and committed to defend itself as well as its customers against these claims because we believe these claims to be unfounded. MVTec has spent a great amount of resources over the years to invent, develop, and to patent machine vision technology" he says. "Last but not least we should keep in mind that back in 2003 Cognex withdrew a law suit regarding matching technology against another one of their biggest competitors."

According to the complaint, Cognex alleges that MVTec's product HALCON violates several US patents of Cognex related to matching technology which is one of the core technologies used widely in machine vision. Fuji, as one of the prominent manufacturers of semiconductor equipment, is claimed of infringe the same Cognex US patents because it allegedly uses HALCON in its machines.