ESI States Cognex Lawsuit Has No Merit

 PORTLAND, Ore., March 19, 2001 (PRNewswire) - Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. (ESI) announced today that it has been notified of a patent lawsuit filed against ESI by Cognex Corporation in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts.  Cognex alleges that ESI's CorrectPlace™ machine vision software infinges Cognex's U.S. patent No. 5,371,690 entitled 'Method and Apparatus for Inspection of Surface Mounted Devices.'

ESI believes that the Cognex suit is without merit and will vigorously defend this action.
 
The CorrectPlace™ product is one of ESI's series of seven OEM vision products that make up a portion of ESI's vision and inspection systems product line.  The entire vision and inspection systems product line, including both OEM and systems products, made up 8% of the company's consolidated sales for the quarter ended March 3, 2001.

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About ESI:
ESI, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, designs and manufactures sophisticated products used around the world in electronics manufacturing, including: laser manufacturing systems for semiconductor yield improvement; production and test equipment for the manufacture of surface mount ceramic capacitors; laser trim systems for precise electrical tuning of circuits; precision laser and mechanical drilling systems for electronic interconnection; and machine vision systems.  ESI's website is www.esi.com.