Cognex Corporation has accepted a settlement offer from Multitest Elektronische Systeme GmbH and its U.S. subsidiary in a dispute concerning Multitest's importation and sale of equipment containing MVTec HALCON machine vision software. Terms of the settlement between the parties were not made public.

Cognex has alleged in complaints filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in federal court in Massachusetts that Halcon software, marketed by MVTec Software GmbH, infringes at least three Cognex machine vision patents. In addition to Multitest, the ITC is investigating 20 other companies for violating Cognex patents by selling, importing and using MVTec products that contain machine vision technology invented and patented by Cognex.

The current settlement agreement releases Multitest from the ITC investigation. Multitest is not a party to the federal court lawsuit.

"Cognex is pleased with Multitest's decision to resolve this dispute in a rational and business-like way, and we look forward to working with Multitest to integrate Cognex software in its products in the future,"said Dr. Robert J. Shillman, Chairman and CEO of Cognex. "Cognex has invested over $100 million in R&D to develop our leading-edge technology, and on behalf of our shareholders who made that investment, and on behalf of our customers who pay to use our proprietary technology, we will continue to take a very strong stand to protect our patents whenever we discover infringement."