Cisco Can't Shield Customers From Patent Suits, Court Rules 111
netbuzz writes "A federal appeals court in California has upheld a lower court ruling that Cisco lacks the necessary standing to seek dismissal of patent infringement lawsuits against some of its biggest customers – wireless network providers and enterprises – being brought by TR Labs, a Canadian research consortium. The appeals court agreed with TR Labs' that its patent infringement claims are rightfully against the users of telecommunications equipment – be it made by Cisco, Juniper, Ciena or others – and not the manufacturers. 'In fact, all of the claims and all of the patents are directed at a communications network, not the particular switching nodes that are manufactured by Cisco and the other companies that are subject of our claims,' an attorney for TR Labs told the court. The court made no judgment relative to the patents themselves or the infringement claims."
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Cisco has patents and a fleet of IP attorneys. In other words, the patent holders are looking to sue people that can't fight back.
Re:If a patent covers not the hardware but its use (Score:4, Insightful)
If the patent was for using some piece of hardware in a new and inventive way that the original manufacturer hadn't thought of, then maybe it would be valid. But using Cisco networking gear to set up a network in exactly the way described in the manual or training materials doesn't come into that category.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case it's actually the opposite: It's them suing the people that BOUGHT YOUR SHITTY CHINESE CARS, and not letting you shield the folks that bought those cars from you, because their patents are covering a delivery-van company instead of delivery-vans specifically.
Re:So does anybody... (Score:5, Insightful)
The patents are about automatic failover when network nodes or spans break. The earlier patents are about having spare nodes and spans and deciding which to use when some part of the network fails (eg. having a node which broadcasts "who can help?" and available nodes broadcast back "i can help!" and a single node decides which available node to use). The later patents are about turning on and off routes between nodes to reconfigure the network, usually into some sort of mesh network.
I'm not a network engineer so it's hard for me to judge, but the earlier patents seem trivial to me especially since they're from the late 1990s. The latter patents might have some merit - the idea of changing the network to a mesh is interesting, but my gut feeling is they're mostly solutions that any decent engineer would come up with after a bit of head scratching.
Re:judges said Cisco products don't infringe (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the rulings, suing Cisco would be like suing Xerox for copyright infringement.
Or Napster for copyright infringment. Or the Pirate Bay. Or.... Somehow judges have no difficulty at all with such a reasoning.
Re:judges said Cisco products don't infringe (Score:5, Insightful)
> So there's really nothing to get upset about here.
Of course there is. A dumb ruling sets a precedent that may not affect *you* in the instant case, but it could certainly set a precedent that another company could use to come after *you* later.
Judge any and all cases on the *merits* and the underlying principles, not on whether you like or identify with the defendant.
Re:You are joking surely! (Score:5, Insightful)