As a result of the settlement, Silvaco (Santa Clara, Calif.) said it has obtained full ownership of all former CSI Dyna products, including patent rights and source code as of the last official day of business of CSI on Aug. 15, 2004.

Simucad, Silvaco spinoff, will continue the development, sales and support of these products under the names AccuCel and AccuCore, the company said.

"I am pleased that this legal battle with CSI is finally over after years of litigation", said Ivan Pesic, CEO of both Silvaco and Simucad Design Automation Inc., the modeling and simulation EDA tool provider that spun out of Silvaco in January and currently gearing up for an initial public offering later this year. "We can now move forward."

The settlement apparently brings to close a four-year legal battle that first came to light in 2002, when Silvaco and CSI appeared headed for a trial after Silvaco alleged that two former employees who went to work for CSI used Silvaco source code in the development of CSI's DynaSpice product.

Under the terms of a 2003 settlement following mediation, CSI was ordered to stop selling DynaSpice, pay an undisclosed sum and hand over all of its source code to Silvaco.

"Now that the cloud of litigation with CSI is behind us, we welcome former CSI and new customers", said Ken Brock, vice president of marketing for Simucad Design Automation. "After several years of working with key customers, adding capabilities, fixing bugs, re-engineering and porting to multiple platforms, we are now ready to deliver a powerful set of cell, block, and full-chip characterization solutions".