EMC Corp. announced a patent infringement lawsuit against its rival Hewlett Packard Co. on Monday, some six hours after HP announced its suing EMC for the same thing.
HP officials, in Palo Alto, Calif., first alleged that EMCs Symmetrix and Clariion hardware and TimeFinder software infringe on seven of HPs patents for data transmission, data reading/writing and storage networking. EMC, in response, alleges that HP is infringing on six of the Hopkinton, Mass., firms patents for technologies in remote mirroring, replication and mainframe storage, within the Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) and in TimeFinder.
“The normal action is to show them (the patents) to a potential infringer and demonstrate their merits…The fact that they wouldnt tell us about these patents until today leads us to believe the suit is frivolous and without merit,” EMC spokesman Mark Fredrickson said in a e-mail statement to reporters.
“Were trying to get the infringing products… off the market,” spokeswoman Anne Pace elaborated.
HP expects little to no short-term effects for users, spokesman Mark Stouse said, in Houston.