Sun To Seek Injunction, Damages Against NetApp 183
Zeddicus_Z writes to note that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has outlined Sun's response to Network Appliance's recent patent infringement lawsuit over ZFS: "As a part of this suit, we are requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of their filer products from the marketplace, and are examining the original NFS license — on which Network Appliance was started. In addition... we will be going after sizable monetary damages. And I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform... [Regarding NetApp's demands in order to drop its existing case against Sun:] ...[to] unfree ZFS, to retract it from the free software community, and to limit ZFS's allowable field of use to computers — and to forbid its use in storage devices."
old news. (Score:0, Informative)
In the interest of fairness (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Translation for the non-lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
Sun used the product from the patent and created a Free version without permission. That makes them a great 'Robin Hood', but it also makes them the 'bad guy' in the eyes of the law.
Sun Started this BTW.... (Score:4, Informative)
How did we get here?
"Like many large technology companies, Sun has been using its patent portfolio as a profit center. About 18 months ago, Sun's lawyers contacted NetApp with a list of patents they say we infringe, and requested that we pay them lots of money. We responded in two ways. First, we closely examined their list of patents. Second, we identified the patents in our portfolio that we believe Sun infringes."
http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2007/09/netapp-sues-sun.html [netapp.com]
Re:This is why we need to KEEP software patents (Score:2, Informative)
In the US the patent system is broken since it allows the patenting of things not methods, this really extends copywrite rather than being a separate process?
Patent your method
Copywrite your original idea
Trademark your logo/name
Re:This is why we need to KEEP software patents (Score:5, Informative)
There's no maybe about this. As part of a patent application, "the specification must include a written description of the invention and of the manner and process of making and using it, and is required to be in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the technological area to which the invention pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same [uspto.gov]"; and patent examiners are responsible for determining if a patent application meets this requirement.
Most of the problems with the patent system right now can be traced to the fact that patent examiners neither have enough time nor the qualifications necessary to make such determinations -- the days when the likes of Einstein worked for the Patent Office are long past. However, this is a reason to recruit more and better patent examiners (and in particular more in the area of computing), not to throw out the entire system.
Re:Translation for the non-lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
You're stating as a matter of fact that Sun "used the product from the patent". This is stretching the truth somewhat. The actual facts of the matter are that NetApp claims Sun have violated their patent (WAFL, etc), and filed suit requesting relief. Sun however disagree and believe they do not violate NetApps' patents - indeed Sun claim, in their counter-suits, that NetApp are violating Suns' patents. However, no-one is violating anyone's patents until either both parties agree they are, or a judge says so.
You can read Suns' response to NetApps' complaint [sun.com] (which #include's most, if not all, of NetApps' complaint).
NB: I am a Sun employee. I have tried to keep the above post be 100% fact-based and opinion-free, but I am obviously biased, I also may be wrong and finally IANAL. Lector emptor.
Re:You always copy stuff other's have done ... (Score:2, Informative)
Delighted to see Netapp takiing it! (Score:5, Informative)
I have a few Netapps here and can't use them because Netapp will not release the activation license key.
An IT future without Netapp's built in obsolescence is a better future.
I hope Sun has a field day with them.
Re:This is why we need to KEEP software patents (Score:2, Informative)
Well. Innovative? Around 2000, Daniel Phillips developed a linux filesystem called Tux2 that was based on the same ideas as WAFL, ZFS and maybe BTRFS. He knew about NetApps patents but believed there was enough prior art [iu.edu].
Unfortunately for filesystem innovation, it looks like he got
bullied [indiana.edu]
by netapp [indiana.edu], so the project was abandoned.
It would be great if the WAFL patents could get invalidated, or at least their scope tightened, so that creative people can get on with innovative filesystem development once again.
Re:Sun Started this BTW.... (Score:3, Informative)
Patent office funding (Score:2, Informative)
(b) The Director shall charge the following fees for maintaining in force all patents based on applications filed on or after December 12, 1980:
(1) 3 years and 6 months after grant, $830.
(2) 7 years and 6 months after grant, $1,900.
(3) 11 years and 6 months after grant, $2,910.
Unless payment of the applicable maintenance fee is received in the Patent and Trademark Office on or before the date the fee is due or within a grace period of 6 months thereafter, the patent will expire as of the end of such grace period. The Director may require the payment of a surcharge as a condition of accepting within such 6-month grace period the payment of an applicable maintenance fee. No fee may be established for maintaining a design or plant patent in force.
Re:Funny thing (Score:3, Informative)
The most serious so far has been that the semantics of resilvering a zfs mirror
are well, questionable.
Imagine this scenario:
One half of the mirror dies (e.g. hardware failure).
You replace the failed device and put the mirror back online.
ZFS will do a resilver and report the mirror as "online" and
"healthy".
Sounds all good, right?
Well, actually resilvering alone doesn't make the mirror
redundant again! Pulling the plug of either side at
that stage will trigger a nice kernel oops.
You have to perform a *scrub* on the pool to get
full mirror redundancy back.
We're glad that we caught this during testing because
it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. Even the
sun technician that handled our issue was pretty surprised.
Now one may argue that this is more a documentation bug than
anything else, nonetheless we were told that sun considers
to change the behaviour in a future patch. Not least because
the zpool status output (remember: "healthy", "online") is
strongly misleading. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a way
to determine whether a "healthy" mirror is actually redundant
(i.e. has been scrubbed, yet) or not. At least not
with the standard CLI tools...
The workaround, for now, is to scrub your mirror after
any changes - and ofcourse it doesn't hurt to do it
regularly anyways.
Most of the other issues we had have fortunately
been fixed with recent solaris-patches.
For example the dreaded SYNCHRONIZE CACHE issue that
would kill performance on storage arrays with
battery backed cache:
http://blogs.digitar.com/jjww/?itemid=44 [digitar.com]
Well, in summary, we're quite happy with ZFS so
far and it is maturing steadily. Just make sure
to test it very thoroughly, especially corner cases
and failure conditions, or you might cut yourself
on one of few the remaining rough edges...
It is definately the most interesting choice for a filesystem
nowadays. Although I'm eager to see what HAMMER will bring to
the table...