Appeals Court Backs Laser Patent

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a jury decision that General Scanning Inc. infringed one Electro Scientific Industries Inc. patent and that a second patent was invalid.

The appeals court ruling means that General Scanning must pay $13,133,370 in damages plus interest and court costs for infringing Electro Scientific's US Patent No. 5,265,114. That patent covers the use of lasers at 1.2 to 3 µm to vaporize defective memory cell links on semiconductor wafers without damaging the underlying silicon.

The invalidated patent, No. 5,473,624, covered the same lasers' use in severing nonmetal link structures.