Commitments and Contingencies

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2012

Commitments and Contingencies [Abstract]

Commitments and Contingencies Disclosure [Text Block]

Commitments and Contingencies

Warranty Reserves

Changes in the Company’s warranty reserves are as follows:

	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2012			2011
Balance, beginning of the period	$	1,406		$	1,654
Accruals	506			624
Usage	(522		)	(538		)
Balance, end of the period	$	1,390		$	1,740

Warranty reserves are reported in the Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets within the caption “Accounts payable and accrued liabilities.”

Legal Matters

From time to time the Company is subject to legal proceedings and claims in the ordinary course of business. As previously disclosed, in December 2007, the Company completed the acquisition of specific assets and liabilities of the semiconductor division of Applied Precision LLC (“Applied”). As a result of the acquisition, the Company assumed certain liabilities of Applied including a lawsuit filed by Integrated Technology Corporation (“ITC”) which alleged Applied’s PrecisionPoint™ and PrecisionWoRx® products infringed an ITC patent. Prior to trial, the judge found that the Company’s products made prior to August of 2007 infringed the ITC patent. In December 2011, a trial verdict was rendered in the United States District Court, District of Arizona in which the jury found that while the Company’s products manufactured after August of 2007 did not literally infringe ITC’s patent, the products were found to infringe under a rule known as the doctrine of equivalents, a legal principle which expands the language of patent claims to encompass products or processes which may otherwise be found not to literally infringe the patent. The jury awarded $15,475 to ITC in damages for sales made during the years 2000-2011. The jury also found that for sales made after August of 2007, the infringement was willful. The verdict and damages assessment are subject to post-trial motions and filings and further court review and rulings, which could potentially result in an increase or decrease in the damages award. Depending upon the outcome of these matters, the Company will consider further legal pursuit. As this litigation is still ongoing, the Company believes that it has meritorious defenses and shall continue to vigorously defend the action.  With that, it is reasonably possible that the Company could realize a loss in this matter related to products made after August of 2007 such that in the event that the Company is ultimately found liable, damage estimates related to this case, which have not been accrued for as of March 31, 2012, range from approximately $25 to $23,374, depending on multiple factors presented by the parties.  With regard to products made before August of 2007, it is probable that the Company could realize a loss in this matter for which the Company has estimated its potential liability to be, approximately $4,293, which the Company has recorded in “Other current liabilities” in the Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets. While the Company continues to believe that its current PrecisionPoint and ProbeWoRx systems do not infringe ITC’s patent, the Company has removed from all of its future tools the predictive scrub feature that was found to be at issue in the litigation.

In the Company’s patent infringement suit against Camtek, Ltd., of Migdal Hamek, Israel, concerning the Company’s proprietary continuous scan wafer inspection technology, the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals issued a ruling on August 22, 2011.  In its opinion, the Appellate Court affirmed multiple rulings from trial at the District Court level including (i) finding the Company’s U.S. Patent No. 6,826,298 valid, (ii) the part of the infringement ruling based on the finding that Camtek’s Falcon product strobes “based on velocity,” and (iii) the dismissal of Camtek’s claim against the Company for inequitable conduct against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  The court did, however, revise one claim construction ruling made by the District Court in the original case.  As a result, the Appellate Court set aside the verdict delivered by the jury for damages and the District Court’s decision to enter an injunction against Camtek’s selling Falcon tools in the U.S. and remanded the case back to the trial court for a limited trial on this the single infringement issue.  No trial date has been set for this limited trial.  This lawsuit was initially brought in 2005 by August Technology prior to its merger with the Company.