Slashdot Log In
NetApp Hits Sun With Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Sep 05, 2007 08:07 PM
from the don't-take-the-law-into-your-own-hands dept.
from the don't-take-the-law-into-your-own-hands dept.
jcatcw writes "Computerworld reports, "Network Appliance Inc. today announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Sun Microsystems Inc. seeking unspecified compensatory damages and an injunction that would prohibit Sun from developing or distributing products based on its ZFS file system technology. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Lufkin, Texas, charges that the Sun ZFS technology infringes on seven NetApp patents pertaining to data processing systems and related software.""
Related Stories
[+]
Sun To Seek Injunction, Damages Against NetApp 183 comments
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."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Once again, the Patent Question to ask is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguing about patents won't change them (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that matters here is whether prior art can be forund for WAFL.
Re:Arguing about patents won't change them (Score:5, Insightful)
Original PDF and NetApp's explanation (Score:5, Informative)
And here is NetApp's boss blog: http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/ [netapp.com] (quoted below):
This morning, NetApp filed an IP (intellectual property) lawsuit against Sun. It has two parts. The first is a "declaratory judgment", asking the court to decide whether we infringe a set of patents that Sun claims we do. The second says that Sun infringes several of our patents with its ZFS technology.
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.
With respect to Sun's patent claims, our lawsuit explains that we do not infringe, and - in fact - that they are not even valid. As a result, we don't think we should be paying Sun millions of dollars.
On the flip side, our suit points out that Sun's ZFS appears to infringe several of NetApp's WAFL patents. It looks like ZFS was a conscious reimplementation of our WAFL filesystem, with little regard to intellectual property rights. Here's what creators of ZFS have to say: "The file system that has come closest to our design principles, other than ZFS itself, is WAFL
We filed suit against Sun because after we pointed out the WAFL patents, their lawyers stopped getting back to us. The first part of our suit is a declaratory judgment. It's complicated, but the basic idea is that Sun claims we infringe their patents, so we are requesting a trial to show that's not true. In essence, a declaratory judgment calls their bluff. It allows us to force a legal conclusion, rather than leaving this threat hanging over our heads. The second part is a complaint against Sun for infringing several WAFL patents with ZFS.
Re: (Score:2)
The only people that get hurt is the consumer, who has to pay al
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Put your magic wand away.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'm torn.. I've been looking at NAS,SAN
Re:Original PDF and NetApp's explanation (Score:5, Informative)
We recently began a deployment of a couple of NetApp filers, the 2040 and 3040 ranges. They are mighty great to work with from my experience so far. The software is very easy to use and understand and NetApp support has been stellar thus far. They move a lost faster than EMC from the looks although EMC's storage offerings are mighty impressive as well.
Storage is a rough business but the SAN I'm deploying this year paves the way for virtualized servers next year which I'm excited about. With VMWare's ACE I'm not even sure Tripwire is needed anymore.
Also it seems as though NetApp was rather nice about this whole patent thing from the get go. It wasn't until Sun threatened them that they acted and again acted fairly preferring a cross licensing deal rather than any cash payout in either direction.
Sun support in my experience has been a pain in the ass. I remember trying to modify the startup resolution on a box since I didn't have a Sun monitor or keyboard. They would not help me over the phone since it was a none Sun keyboard even though they had no problem with a non-Sun monitor. I did a key mash to figure out the stop key on boot to get me in. That was the last time I played with anything from Sun. That was about 4 years ago. Mileage may vary but I've not heard anything positive more recently. I am a fan of ZFS though, I wish it weren't mired in this crap but Sun started the fight and attacked a gorilla. The reaction had to be expected.
Re:Original PDF and NetApp's explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a nice story, but Sun is claiming the exact opposite actually happened, with NetApp trying to extort them over ZFS first. On a purely intuitive basis I'd say that sounds more reasonable, NetApp has much more to fear from ZFS than Sun had to gain by trying to extort some licensing fees.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You may be right, I've been seeing conflicting reports on the order in which this happened. Honestly though NetApp has been thrashing the whole industry over the last few years, I don't see what they would have to gain by this. Between Oracle and GoDaddy a
Re:Original PDF and NetApp's explanation (Score:4, Informative)
According to the filing, this dispute originated with a claim by StorageTek, which was later bought by Sun (and Sun decided to continue to claim). Tracing the timeline, it's clear that Sun was trying to squeeze money out of NetApp before ZFS ever shipped.
It's also alledged, in the filing, that NetApp is more concerned about the fact that Sun is giving away ZFS and its snapshot IP, which NetApp claims are its own. NetApp was OK with letting ZFS use this technology, but not with Sun giving it away to everyone else via OpenSolaris.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dave's one of the founders, but he's not the CEO or president, he's an executive vice president, as per the NetApp executive biographies page [netapp.com].
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
No good way to opt-out. (Score:2, Informative)
Don't patents ever protect your good ideas?! In theory, they should, but in practice it doesn't usually work that wa
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If this were a physical widget, it looks like Netapp would have a clear case. The question is whether or not the genuinely invented something
Patents: Recoup investment (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry. Patents are good thin
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They can do that now! (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, let's say I have a revolutionary new programming language. Great stuff, but, ultimately, it will need a bunch of existing technologies to make it work. I'll need parse trees, string manipulations, code generation, and hey, why not an IDE, all of which are covered by a bazillion patents already.
So, if I bring my product to market, the best I can possibly hope for is a cross licensing agreement with a major player, and that in turn, means they can crush me. Or, they can work around my patent in some way, still get the feature, and crush me. Patents don't protect ideas, unless you have a lot of very good patent attorneys and those cost big bucks.
In the world of machines, this doesn't happen. If I invent a new kind of a screw, its pretty obvious that the screw is a patentable thing. But software doesn't exist at that level of componentry and most likely never will. It simply can't. Software wants to integrate and to some extent, that makes it unique from the physical world. You don't need to integrate a particular kind of screw into every single socket and with every single tool, but ultimately, with software, you do wind up having to talk to every kind of protocol, database, and GUI, and in doing so, you wind up flying into a hailstorm of patents.
Seriously, when's the last time anyone has actually checked to see if they infringe before they write something? Only a big company can really afford to do it. Face it, the idea of a little guy with a software patent is a myth, 95% of the time, and its simply not worth the cost to the rest of us - even if we work in a big corporation.
Re:Once again, the Patent Question to ask is... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't create the model or design, or come up with a means to do so, too bad, no patent. Ideas are simple. Making something of them is what patents are supposed to protect.
Software is not a physical thing. Why a need to patent? You really shouldn't be able to patent math or the way that you apply it. Copyright, sure, but not patent.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not so sure that's true. What about the brilliant inventor who comes up with a very complicated system but has no capital with which to finance a prototype? Seems to
How much does a patent cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
If he has no cash to build a prototype, how is he going to pay for a patent portfolio?
In the UK, it costs £200 to have a patent processed by the Patent Office, but there is an additional (approx) £3000 to have your patent drafted/checked by an agent against existing patents and translated into legalese. This £3000 is for each country that you want to apply for a patent. 20 countries, approx £60,000. Minimum. If you don't apply worldwide, the big guy, will simply take your patent and build and sell your product in the rest of the world.
Then, once you have your patent. The big guy sets his reverse engineering team on it, they find a slightly different way of doing the same job, and all your patents are useless. Go ahead, just try and sue that multi billion dollar organisation, see what happens to your house, job and family.
If you're a brilliant inventor with no money, you're pretty much fucked unless you can license your technology to a someone with deep pockets and who are reasonably honourable. Patents protect large organisations who can afford to roll them out worldwide... And patent lawyer's jobs.
They are not there for the small fry.
Re:Once again, the Patent Question to ask is... (Score:5, Interesting)
would have many of the features netapps WAFL has, and ZFS has now.
This filesystem was called Tux2.
He was quite sure that the patents NetApp had on this weren't valid,
because of prior art, and because his algorithm was quite
different and quite a bit smarter:
http://uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0010.0/
Yet somewhere in 2002, he gave up on Tux2, presumably due to pressure
from netapp: http://lkml.org/lkml/2002/8/26/138 [lkml.org] .
I wonder what will happen to BTRFS in light of this new NetApp
legal action: http://oss.oracle.com/projects/btrfs/ [oracle.com]
Mike.
You got patents? We got patents too! (Score:5, Funny)
How you like that?
Re:You got patents? We got patents too! (Score:5, Informative)
See, this is one of the things that's annoying about the term "intellectual property" -- it leads to people getting confused about what's what. Patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets are all very different things, and have very different rules that apply.
ComputerWorld Story Placement (Score:2, Interesting)
Bloggers paid based on traffic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Normally, I would jump on the editor(s) more than the submitter. If a submitter's is *less* interested in getting stories of interest to the community posted and more interested in pulling traffic to their site, then it is the editor's job to recognise thi
A better article... (Score:5, Informative)
This actually mentions the specific technologies NetApp is alleging are infringed, and contains a link to the actual complaint, which lists the details of NetApp's allegations.
Cursory reading suggests these are somewhat reasonable patents--they solve non-obvious critical issues in terms of having data synchronized across multiple images. We're not talking about "One-Click Ordering" here.
That said, they filed in East Texas, which is a notorious district for patent trolling, which doesn't help them appear on the side of the angels IMO.
Sounds like the article misrepresents the facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds more like both Sun and NetApp are infringing on each others patents, and Sun simply wanted to formally resolve this in order to be on the safe side. This article seems awfully one-sided though, and the way the quote is paraphrased, it looks like the author is more interested in dragging Sun's name through the mud than presenting the facts.
Re: (Score:2)
You make me sick.
Patent Pirate Venue - LUFKIN TX (Score:5, Interesting)
Lufkin is very long way from anywhere. I live in Dallas TX and Lufkin is a long 3hr 18m trip South and East from here. Yet Network Applications Inc is a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company. Both Sun and Network Applications Inc are based in California.
Formerly the haven for patent pirates was Marshall TX. The same thing is probably going on in Lufkin TX.
Check out this article. "A Haven for Patent Pirates In one federal court in East Texas, plaintiffs have such an easy time winning patent-infringement lawsuits against big-tech companies that defendants often choose to settle rather than fight."
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech-Software
May the company with the best case win,
Jim
Re: (Score:2)
The Eastern District of Texas was a popular place for IP litigation because of its so-called "rocket
Ancient ext3 history (Score:4, Interesting)
At least Sun has the means to defend itself.
I was wondering when this would happen. (Score:2)
Apparently (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apparently (Score:4, Informative)
Except that you are clearly ignorant about NetApp snapshots. They are very different from snapshots from other providers. I recently evaluated SANs from HP, EMC, and NetApp. NetApp was the most original and offered a lot of unique features including their snapshot technology. It's very non-obvious their implementation of it.
Here's a link to educate(PDF) [cosentry.com]
And another Bunch of white papers [zdnet.co.uk] explaining why Oracle went with NetApp storage. There is a similar list for GoDaddy
NetApp is not SCO, they are only acting because Sun threatened them. They are most innovative big company I've seen in recent years. Their WAFL implementation is pretty damned impressive especially when combined with Flexclone and their other Snapshot products.
hmmm (Score:2)
Lot of corporate fud (Score:3, Interesting)
SUN says that NetApp tried to force the patents from them [sun.com] first and they boo-booed them.
Ah... we might not know who did what first, but I'm definitely annoyed that the lawsuite between two CALIFORNIAN companies is filed in TEXAS court by NetApp... no prizes for guessing that that court is a haven for patent trolls, so I'm more inclined to believe Sun's story here.
Lots of people saw this coming (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm kind of glad that Linux uses XFS, JFS and m (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be a damn shame if development on it were halted because of silly patents.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So lemme get this straight: a modern filesystem designed and engineered with a specific purpose, capability- and feature-set outperforms an older, more modestly-specced general-purpose filesystem designed with smaller volumes in mind in tests of such capa
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No. Go read NetApp's complaint [netapp.com], which enumerates the patents Sun claims NetApp is infringing and NetApp claims Sun is infringing, then lo