A firm that can begin to supply a product within one year may be considered a market participant. See Statement of Chairman Robert Pitofsky and Commissioner Janet D. Steiger at 4. 5. Statement of Chairman Pitofsky and Commissioner Steiger, note 8. In so stating, they reveal that Cadence had products under development and that the products were sufficiently advanced for customer testing. Since it is pointless to debate confidential information, suffice it to say that I disagree with this assessment of the project, based on my review of the customer information and on the views of Cadence's technology development partners.
Preliminary testing is an ordinary part of the product development process.
Software developers commonly seek customer reactions in beta testing and use the customer responses to refine their products. This appears to be a substantial percentage of the universe of potential customers. The company reported continued improvement during the third quarter, which included the Cadence agreement on September 12, 1996. To put that amount in perspective, it should be observed that IC Craftsman was first introduced in the second half of 1995.