Calif., San Jose, United States:  Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN), the world's leading supplier of electronic design products and services, announced Monday that it has filed a lawsuit against Mentor Graphics Corporation; Meta Systems, its subsidiary; and Aptix Corporation on behalf of Quickturn Design Systems, a Cadence subsidiary. The Cadence complaint is based in part on a ruling in June 2000 by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California which dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit filed against Quickturn by Meta, Mentor and Aptix. The dismissal was based on a set of findings that Aptix and its CEO had engaged in a pattern of fraud, including the creation and attempted concealment of fabricated evidence, intended to deceive Quickturn and the District Court. The District Court's June 2000 ruling was affirmed in November 2001 by the U.S. Court of Appeals.

"These court rulings support our long-standing contention that Aptix, with the active support of Mentor and Meta, engaged in outright fraud in the patent infringement complaint against Quickturn," said Penny Herscher, Cadence executive vice president and chief marketing officer. "This fraud is the basis for our current complaint. With this lawsuit we are serving notice -- we will not tolerate this sort of malicious prosecution or attempts by competitors to unlawfully abuse the legal system to distract us from our priority, the delivery of leading-edge technologies and second-to-none customer service and support."

Herscher added that "integrity above all else" is a Cadence core value. "The facts of the case are clear -- the defendants named in our complaint conspired to fabricate evidence and claim intellectual property that is rightfully ours. We cannot allow this type of fraudulent activity to go unchallenged. We will protect our intellectual property, and we look forward to prevailing in court."

About Cadence

Cadence is the world's largest supplier of electronic design technologies and services. Leading computer, networking, wireless, and consumer electronics companies use the company's solutions to design electronic systems and semiconductors down to nanometer scale. IEEE, the world's largest technical professional society, honored Cadence with its 2002 Corporate Innovation Recognition award. With approximately 5,600 employees and 2001 revenues of approximately $1.4 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company and its products and services is available at www.cadence.com.

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