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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."
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.
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?