Blue Pumpkin Wins Full Dismissal Of Patent Lawsuit By IEX

Blue Pumpkin, an industry leader in enterprise workforce optimization solutions, today announced an important legal victory in the patent infringement lawsuit brought forth by IEX, a workforce management product provider. The courts dismissed IEX's case with prejudice, invalidating their claims and determining that a trial was not warranted.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas last week upheld a Magistrate Judge's recommendation to dismiss IEX's case against Blue Pumpkin with prejudice, stating that IEX's "objections and arguments have been skillfully presented, but they are not persuasive."

"As we maintained from the beginning, the IEX claim is without merit, and the court's decisive ruling absolutely vindicates our position," stated Nilesh Shah, chief financial officer and executive vice president for Blue Pumpkin. "We will continue to aggressively defend our business and products against competitive threats and allegations."

"The dismissal of this lawsuit should put an end to the uncertainty and doubt that has distracted the marketplace and hampered industry growth," said Paul Stockford, chief analyst at Saddletree Research. "The fact that the industry can once again focus on business and product development and other issues important to the customer will be to everyone's benefit."

Despite the challenges posed by the lawsuit, Blue Pumpkin's innovative solutions, services and customer commitment have helped propel the company to bottom-line profitability, and new partners and customers have strengthened its global community. In addition, the latest published market data for Q1 2003 shows Blue Pumpkin leading the industry in worldwide market share. This growth is also reflected by the company's second consecutive ranking on the prestigious Inc 500 list of America's fastest-growing private companies.

"Blue Pumpkin's continued success and momentum have been remarkable, particularly considering IEX's apparent efforts to hinder our progress," stated Doron Aspitz, chairman and chief executive officer of Blue Pumpkin. "With this dispute behind us, we can turn all of our attention to more productive matters, namely driving the workforce optimization industry with new solutions that accelerate performance and success for our customers."

About Blue Pumpkin
Blue Pumpkin is the only workforce optimization vendor that that can deliver both the science and the art required to optimize the performance of a company's most valuable asset - its people. Addressing critical business challenges with both innovative technology - the science - and best-practices professional services - the art - we help our customers align performance measurements with business goals, develop strategic staffing plans, deploy resources, evaluate the results, and implement on-going improvements. Blue Pumpkin solutions deliver proven value to more than 1,000 organizations worldwide such as AOL Time Warner, AT&T, eBay, E*TRADE, Federal Express, JetBlue, Mercedes-Benz and Visa. More information can be found on www.bluepumpkin.com.