In Tokyo, former Avanti customer Mitsubishi Electric declined comment on the case (see related story), saying executives weren't available. Similarly, Matsushita Electric, which placed a long-term purchase order with Avanti back in the mid '90s, said it had "no official comment" on the case. The company stressed that it adopted new software from Avanti that bore no relationship to the ArcCell products that were under dispute.

An industry source who declined to be identified downplayed the impact of the ruling on Avanti's business in Japan, saying it wouldn't necessarily provide a boon to adversary Cadence Design Systems, because lately Avanti has not been the force it was in the mid '90s. In fact, Avanti's revenues and market share beat a rapid retreat the late '90s. In 1997, Avanti did more than $30 million in business, but this plummeted to $16.8 million the following year, hitting $14.2 million in 1999, according to Gartner Dataquest figures.

"The 1997 customer figures show that Avanti's access-tools business wasn't so good, because of the court ruling. The company lost more than half of its IC layout tools business between 1997 and 1999," the source said.

While the source suggested Avanti's legal problems could be one cause, he also pointed out that the Japanese IC layout software market has seen stiff competition from companies such as Seiko Instruments, Okura and Mentor Graphics, which all took market share from both Cadence and Avanti. Mentor, for example, doubled its revenues from $6.5 million to $13.4 million from 1997 to 1999, according to Gartner Dataquest figures.

Sony Corp., a former Avanti customer, said it no longer has any relationship with Avanti, and a spokesperson declined comment on why Sony stopped using the company's software over three years ago.

"We used them in the past, and now we have no business relationship with them, and we can't comment on a company we no longer do business with," said the spokesman.

"We can't comment on the reasons why we stopped working with them, and you can draw your own conclusions as to whether it was connected to their problem," the Sony spokesman added.