Deputy district attorney Julius Finkelstein said at a restitution hearing Tuesday (June 26) that the 3M backup tape recovered from the office of Avanti cofounder Stephen Wuu in December 1995 was the single most damaging piece of evidence gathered against the defendants, who pleaded 'no contest' to the charges in May.

The restitution hearing will determine the damages Avanti and the defendants must pay to Cadence. Avanti has argued that restitution should amount to $16 million, while Cadence has argued for $700 million.

On Tuesday, Finkelstein presented a photograph of the tape at the hearing, pointing out a small handwritten mark on the left hand corner of the tape that reads "backup Wuu tape 0 2/09/91." Finkelstein asked Cadence senior architect Jeff Markham if he could interpret the inscription. " 'Wuu' I guess stands for Stephen Wuu and 'tape zero' is when you download a complete folder," said Markham.

Finkelstein said the Wuu tape contained about 30,000 lines of code from Cadence's Symbad database software. The code on the tape included words that were consistently misspelled in Cadence's Symbad code and in database code found in Avanti's ArcCell and Aquarius place and route systems, Finkelstein said.

Finkelstein contended that the Wuu tape at one time probably contained more Cadence code, but had been edited or copied over by the time of the December 1995 raid by the district attorney's office.

Finkelstein said the tape refuted testimony by John Kelly, a former professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Avanti had called Kelly as an expert witness on Monday to testify on the amount of code found consistently on the Wuu tape, in Symbad and in Avanti's products. This amounted to a few thousand lines of code, Kelly said.

Even so, Cadence's Markham said from the stand that the pieces of code still on the tape represent the "guts" of the Symbad database. Markham also testified that the code allowed Cadence's tools to efficiently store vast amounts of place and route data at a very high speed, thus streamlining design time.

Theft discerned

Markham uncovered the theft of Cadence's code while visiting customer Cirrus Logic Inc. in 1995. An expert in graphical user interface development, not databases, Markham explained that Cirrus gave him a demo of Avanti's ArcCell in 1995 and noticed that the tool had a misalignment in a window — the same misalignment he had recently corrected in Symbad.

In cross examination, Avanti's counsel argued that much of the code came from public domain, and pointed out that Markham is not an expert in database development. Avanti's lawyers also questioned how dearly Cadence holds its database technology if it is now willing to open its current-generation database technology, named Genesis, to the rest of the industry. Cadence also donated database technology to the CAD Framework Initiative in the early 1990s, Avanti's lawyers said.

To drive these points home, Avanti called Chi Ping Hsu, a member of the company's technology staff, as an expert witness. Hsu, who is due to complete his testimony on Wednesday, explained how he developed one of the first routers, the Berkeley Building Block Layout (BBL) system, with a fellow graduate student while at the University of California at Berkeley. Offered free in the public domain, BBL was the basis for many commercial products, including Cadence's Symbad, Hsu said.

Millions apart

Judge Conrad Rushing is hearing arguments from both Avanti and Cadence to formulate restitution. He asked Avanti's counsel on Tuesday if the company had come up with a dollar amount it would deem acceptable to pay Cadence in restitution. That amount, including compensation for legal expenses, is $16 million, according to Avanti lawyer George Riley. Cadence is seeking $700 million in restitution from Avanti.

Avanti's legal counsel has asked Judge Rushing to base his restitution decision on the actual worth of the stolen code. Meanwhile, Finkelstein and Cadence's legal representatives have argued that the amount should reflect the losses Cadence suffered as a result of the code theft. Cadence said the figure should reflect its loss of place and route sales, plus the lost sales of add-on products and services and interest.

"If I'm a movie theater owner, I derive a certain amount of extra money from selling popcorn, soda and candy," said Finkelstein. "If someone comes and vandalizes my movie screen, I'm not only going to lose money from not being able to show movies, but I'm also going to suffer losses because I can't sell popcorn, soda and candy."