Sun Successfully Defends Itself Against $100M Patent Suit - Sun, NetApp Still in Legal Tussle (
Page 2 of 2 )
Sun has a legal conflict with storage maker NetApp that is still in the
discovery phase.
NetApp
filed a lawsuit against Sun on Sept. 5, 2007, seeking damages and a
permanent injunction against the company and claiming Sun infringed on several
patents regarding NetApp's own WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout) file system.
NetApp claims Sun's ZFS (Zettabyte File System), which is included in Sun's
Unix-derived Solaris operating system, is patterned directly after its own WAFL
file system.
NetApp characterized the suit as a defensive step after Sun sought to charge
NetApp to license its technology, NetApp officials said.
Sun, which claims to have created ZFS long
before it released the code to the open-source community in 2007, has responded
with three
countersuits of its own against NetApp and its entire product line, seeking
both injunctions and monetary damages. Court dates have yet to be set in that
legal action.
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