ION Awarded Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction Against Sercel in Patent Infringement Lawsuit

HOUSTON, Feb. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- ION Geophysical Corporation (NYSE: IO) today announced that the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas entered a final judgment and permanent injunction in its patent infringement lawsuit against seismic equipment provider Sercel, Inc.  The permanent injunction, which was entered by the Court on February 16, 2011, prohibits Sercel and parties acting in concert with Sercel from making, using, offering to sell, selling, or importing in the United States (which includes territorial waters of the United States) Sercel's 408UL, 428XL and SeaRay digital sensor units, and all other products that are only colorably different from those products.

On January 29, 2010, the jury in the case returned a verdict finding that Sercel infringed ION's United States Patent No. 5,852,242 and awarded ION $25.2 million in compensatory past damages.  The Court later disallowed $5.4 million of damages related to sales delivered outside of the United States and $9.0 million of lost-profit damages, resulting in a final judgment entered by the Court awarding ION the sum of $10.7 million, plus interest.  As a result of the judge disallowing the lost-profit damages, ION is now entitled to additional damages equal to a reasonable royalty on the infringing Sercel sales and additional damages for sales of infringing products made by Sercel after the jury verdict.  The Court ordered that the additional damages to be paid by Sercel be determined in a separate future proceeding.

The technology within ION's U.S. Patent No. 5,852,242 is incorporated in the VectorSeis® sensor technology used by ION and by ION's joint venture company, INOVA Geophysical Equipment Limited.  ION and INOVA products that use the VectorSeis technology include Scorpion®, FireFly® and VectorSeis Ocean seismic acquisition systems.

About ION

ION is a leading provider of geophysical technology, services, and solutions for the global oil & gas industry. ION's offerings allow E&P operators to obtain higher resolution images of the subsurface to reduce the risk of exploration and reservoir development, and enable seismic contractors to acquire geophysical data more efficiently. Additional information about ION is available at www.iongeo.com.

SOURCE ION Geophysical Corporation