ICOS Awarded a $1.1 Million R&D Grant

12/19/2002: ICOS Vision Systems Corporation N.V. (Nasdaq and Nasdaq Europe: IVIS), a world leader in vision solutions, today announced that it has been awarded a grant of $1.1 million from IWT (Instituut voor de Aanmoediging van Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie in Vlaanderen), a regional public institute for stimulating innovation by science and technology in Flanders. IWT awarded ICOS the grant for advanced R&D activities in connection with the development of the next generation 3D inspection technology for which the company has already filed a patent application. IWT evaluates projects on both their technical merits and their commercial opportunities. The grant is the largest R&D grant that ICOS has received in its history and is expected to be paid in several parts throughout 2003 and 2004. Anton DeProft, president and chief executive officer of ICOS, commented, "Regardless of conditions in the semiconductor industry, preserving our technology leadership and investing in new product development remain key priorities for ICOS. As a result, even in a downturn, we continue to create new market opportunities for the company with the introduction of new products such as the CI-G10. The IWT grant will allow us to further expand our technological capabilities for the next generation of products, while keeping our R&D cost under control." ICOS is a leading worldwide developer and supplier of machine vision and inspection solutions primarily for use in the back-end semiconductor manufacturing and electronic assembly industries. The Company's two- and three-dimensional inspection products are used worldwide to inspect integrated circuits at various stages of their manufacturing process and to align electronic components and printed circuit boards. The Company has three product lines: board-level products to be integrated in die-bonding equipment and in pick-and-place machines, system-level products for integration in test handlers, molding equipment, trim-and-form equipment, marking systems, tape-and-reel equipment and other applications and stand-alone inspection machines. ICOS' headquarters are located in Heverlee, Belgium and it has R&D centers in Belgium, Germany and Hong Kong and sales and support offices in Japan, the USA, Singapore and Hong Kong.