Midwest hicks no more. McDATA sends Brocade a valentine gift. It appears that McDATA finally got tired of listening to Brocade brag about frame filtering when McDATA owns the patent.
McDATA Corporation Files Patent Infringement Claim Against Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. in Denver Federal District Court
BROOMFIELD, Colo., Feb. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- McDATA Corporation today announced that it has filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado against Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, for infringement of McDATA's United States Patent No. 6,233,236, Method and Apparatus for Measuring Traffic Within a Switch.
This patent, which was issued on May 15, 2001, discloses and claims important aspects of the operation for filtering and measuring frame traffic within a switch. Knowledge of the frame or data traffic that flows through a switch can be used to more efficiently manage that data traffic and avoid bottlenecks. McDATA, a leader in storage area networking, holds 25 issued patents related to storage area networking, with an additional 15 pending patent applications.....
biz.yahoo.com
I don't think many people realize that Brocade has only 1 utility patent (plus 4-7 pending patent applications) compared to McDATA's 25 patents (plus 15 pending patent applications). The significance is this: the typical response in a patent infringement lawsuit is a counter lawsuit also alleging patent infringement, but Brocade has only 1 patent (read: narrow basis for counter-claims) and that patent contains references to 12 earlier patents as prior art (read: even narrower basis for counter-claims) -- IBM (1), Hitachi (1), HWP (2), McDATA (8). In fact, McDATA even owns the only 2 patents issued to Kumar Malavalli, one of Brocade's co-founders -- the '612 and '695 patents (read: as narrow as narrow counter-claims can be).
The interesting dynamic to watch is the stance of IBM and EMC since what they do as a result of the restrictions flowing from this will clearly have competitive implications for everybody.
IBM and EMC have a 5-year cross-licensing agreement. EMC and McDATA have a 5-year cross-licensing agreement. IBM and McDATA have a 5-year cross-licesning agreement and IBM also has pass through rights to McDATA's patents through its deal with EMC. These type of agreements typically have narrow clauses governing third-party licensing so odds are that McDATA informed both EMC and IBM as a matter of courtesy so both will know how to avoid getting into what promises to be a no holds-barred litigation.
Here's Delphion's DERWENT despcription of the '623 patent.
Novelty - A switch comprises input-output ports and a switching element to couple source and destination ports. An analysis device of the source port measures parameter specific to data traffic between the ports. The measured parameter is associated with destination port ID, FC-4 frame type identifier.
Detailed Description - The analysis device has register coupled to the source port and holds metadata field. A logical comparator coupled to the registers increments a counter when metadata matches the template stored in another register. INDEPENDENT CLAIMS are also included for the following:
(a) communication system;
(b) method to operate multiport switch
Use - In bidirectional point-to-point switched communication system and connected between servers, storage systems, workstations, switches and hubs and implemented in SLSI and IP frames.
Advantage - The traffic analysis results are provided to route control logic and/or address assignment algorithm that determines the destination port. Hence the traffic analysis information is useful in balancing the traffic load among redundant resources. The switch not only analyzes received packet on the source port that also adapted to analyze packet received into destination port.
delphion.com
McDATA Utility Patent Portfolio
25 patents, 15 pending
(as of 02/15/2002)
Patent Number Filed Issued
I. Internally Developed Utility Patents
01) 6,347,334 01/06/1999 02/12/2002
02) 6,240,096 01/12/2000 05/29/2001
03) 6,233,236 01/12/1999 05/15/2001
04) 6,192,048 10/02/1997 02/20/2001
05) 6,148,004 02/11/1998 11/14/2000
06) 6,138,185 10/29/1998 10/24/2000
07) 6,115,361 01/06/1999 09/05/2000
08) 6,061,358 02/13/1997 05/09/2000
09) 6,031,842 11/26/1997 02/29/2000
10) 6,014,715 02/20/1998 01/11/2000
II. Utility Patents Acquired from HWP in 1997.
11) 5,894,481 09/11/1996 04/13/1999*
12) 5,872,822 10/26/1995 02/16/1999*
13) 5,835,496 04/30/1996 11/10/1998*
14) 5,828,475 01/29/1997 10/27/1998*
15) 5,805,924 11/08/1994 09/09/1998*
16) 5,748,612 08/10/1995 05/05/1998**
17) 5,610,745 10/26/1995 03/11/1997*
18) 5,603,064 10/27/1994 02/11/1997*
19) 5,592,472 10/27/1994 01/07/1997*
20) 5,592,160 10/26/1995 01/07/1997*
21) 5,528,584 10/27/1994 06/18/1996*
22) 5,519,695 10/27/1994 05/21/1996**
23) 5,502,719 10/27/1994 03/26/1996*
24) 5,490,007 10/31/1994 02/06/1996*
25) ? ? ?
* 1997 HWP CNO acquisition = 15 engineers + 14 patents.
14 patents issued to HWP were assigned to McDATA.
eet.com
Brocade Utility Patent Portfolio
(1 patent, 4-7 pending patent applications)
(As of 2/15/2002)
Patent Number Filed Issued
01) 6,160,813 03/21/1997 12/12/2000
All of a sudden this boilerplate risk factor in Brocade's 10K comes alive!
Others may bring infringement claims against us, which could be time-consuming and expensive to defend.
In recent years, there has been significant litigation in the United States involving patents and other intellectual property rights. We have previously been the subject of a lawsuit alleging infringement of intellectual property rights. Although this dispute was resolved and the lawsuit dismissed, and we are not currently involved in any other intellectual property litigation, we may be a party to litigation in the future to protect our intellectual property or as a result of an alleged infringement of others’ intellectual property. These claims and any resulting lawsuit could subject us to significant liability for damages and invalidation of proprietary rights. These lawsuits, regardless of their success, would likely be time-consuming and expensive to resolve and would divert management time and attention. Any potential intellectual property litigation also could force us to do one or more of the following:
-- stop selling, incorporating or using products or services that use the challenged intellectual property;
-- obtain from the owner of the infringed intellectual property a license to the relevant intellectual property, which license may require us to license our intellectual property to such owner, or may not be available on reasonable terms or at all; and
-- redesign those products or services that use such technology.
If we are forced to take any of the foregoing actions, we may be unable to manufacture, use, sell, import and/or export our products, which would reduce revenues.
It wouldn't surprise me to see McDATA go for the overwhelming kill in this case. Brocade is considered by many to be the single largest impediment to the interoperability goal of the industry and many believe that interoperability is necessary in order to drive the technology to the mainstream.
On a related note, this case is going to be prosecuted while Festo vs SKKC is being decided by the US Supreme Court. Some lawyers have called this the most important case in the last 30 years. Some background info.
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