Cisco Can't Shield Customers From Patent Suits, Court Rules

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."

I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

What prevents Cisco sell product with additional service: "in case of court case related to patents used within this device, our legal team will help free of charge"?
And simply provide lawyers anyway?

Re:I don't understand

[LMariachi]

Cisco may not have standing in court, but that shouldn’t prevent them from contributing to their customers’ defense. Lend them some high-priced in-house counsel.

Re:judges said Cisco products don't infringe

[Anonymous Coward]

The patents in question aren't about networking equipment design, they are about network topology design (how the equipment is connected). They are more math patents than anything else. Cisco/Juniper/Ciena/etc make boxes that pass packets, which isn't at all in the patents. If customers connect the boxes in a certain configuration, *that* can infringe the patent. After reading the patents, they are utter BS. Basic mathematical network diagrams and some sweat-of-the-brow calculations which aren't patentable.

So, Cisco and friends aren't at all liable, but the network operators are. Not that all of those operators are "helpless".... AT&T? Verizon? Level3? Many of the players in this field have just dandy legal departments. Wanna bet it's the mom-n-pops that TR is going after?

Re:I don't understand

[dhrabarchuk]

"In fact, I would expect that if we got into a (patent) dispute with Cisco and we conducted discovery, what they would tell us is that you'd have to go talk to our customers if you want to find out how their networks are configured because we can't tell you." - See more at: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco-can%E2%80%99t-shield-customers-patent-suits-court-affirms#sthash.BD5PFArh.dpuf [networkworld.com] So, if the customers are "configuring" the equipment in an infringing way . . . In essence, the appeals court agreed with a lower court's acceptance of TR Labs' contention that its patent infringement claims are rightfully against the users of telecommunications equipment - be it gear made by Cisco, Juniper, Ciena or others - and not the manufacturers - See more at: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco-can%E2%80%99t-shield-customers-patent-suits-court-affirms#sthash.BD5PFArh.dpuf [networkworld.com] So anyone could have been in the courtroom? It was just luck that it was Cisco?

Re:You are joking surely!

[mlts]

For a lot of things, Cisco is the only game in town these days. Well, unless you want to pony 10 times as much for carrier-grade Alcatel-Lucent stuff that has a lifetime warranty. The A-L stuff is great, but to use a car analogy, it would be similar to asking Ferrari to custom-design and build a minivan that is used for taking kids to school and back.

I might be wrong, but generally, with the Cisco-only protocols in use, it is hard to get away from them.

Re:I don't understand

[Gr8Apes]

I took a look at 4,956,835, the first thing I noticed is that it was published in 1988 and should no longer be valid, and quite possibly out of their sue capable window. The second thing I noticed is that it seemingly describes the already in use at the time ATM and TCP / DARPANET configurations. So, with those as prior art, wouldn't this particular patent already be invalid? I'm short of time, or I'd dig more deeply.