Software Firm Moves to Disqualify Prosecutor

Avant! Corp., whose executives face felony charges of stealing business secrets, filed a court motion to disqualify the Santa Clara County prosecutor handling the case, citing conflict of interest and unfair access to evidence. The software company, which writes engineering programs for designers of computer chips, said in its motion that Deputy Dist. Atty. Julius Finkelstein based his criminal investigation on experts paid for by Cadence Design Systems Inc., a company that competes with Avant! (pronounced Avanti). In 1994, San Jose-based Cadence filed a civil lawsuit against the Sunnyvale company, charging that executives stole some of its programming codes and based key software products on Cadence technology. Finkelstein told The Times he has reviewed testimony from experts paid by both sides. He also suggested Avant! has moved against him in part because it fears his expertise in Silicon Valley trade secrets cases. “If I were a defendant in a case such as this and were being prosecuted by a person with computer science and mathematics degrees from Stanford University, I’d probably want a different prosecutor too,” he said.