Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cisco Slaps Arista Networks With Suit For "Brazen" Patent Infringement

Posted by samzenpus on from the do-your-own-work dept.

alphadogg writes Cisco has filed two lawsuits against data center switch competitor Arista Networks for allegedly violating its intellectual property. One suit is for patent infringement, which charges Arista with violating 14 Cisco patents for 12 features in the Arista EOS operating system. The second suit is for extensive copying of Cisco's user manuals and command line structures, right down to the grammatical errors within them. "This is not an accident but a strategy," says a source familiar with the matter. "It was a deliberate, brazen and blatant intellectual property violation in order to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. Arista's shortcutting to get to market and win share."

6 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Come on people, by bruce_the_loon · · Score: 4, Funny

    If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, run the manuals through Google Translate twice and then run Word's grammar checks.

    If you copy verbatim, you gonna get caught.

    --
    Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
    1. Re:Come on people, by gnupun · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you copy verbatim, you gonna get caught.

      Why couldn't they have written their own manual and command line structure? If you did this copying stuff at school, you'd be kicked out of the school. But in the real world, copying will get you bushels of green paper.

    2. Re:Come on people, by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The objective of the copying and likely the patent infringement is so there would be no learning cure for their products. It would end up being a cheaper clone of Cisco that any Cisco certified admin would be comfortable on.

      In short, they didn't really care about getting kicked out of school. They only wanted invited into the computer labs. Once in, it is easier to stay in.

    3. Re:Come on people, by bruce_the_loon · · Score: 3

      There's a difference between copying the command syntax, which has been held as valid in some jurisdictions, and photocopying the manuals.

      --
      Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
  2. Deja vu by seoras · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Huawei did the same thing when they launched their first routers.
    Worse even. They just copied the Cisco IOS code replacing the string "Cisco Systems Inc" with "Huawei"
    Cisco won in court because Huawei's routers had the exact same bugs and spelling mistakes in the IOS CLI.

  3. General Counsel's Blog by HockeyPuck · · Score: 3, Informative

    Cisco's General Counsel has a blog on the subject.

    From another article:

    Arista was founded by former Cisco employees, many of whom are named inventors on Cisco's networking patents. Among others, Arista's: 1) founders, 2) President and CEO, 3) Chief Development Officer, 4) Chief Technology Officer, 5) Senior Vice President for Customer Engineering, 6) Vice President of Business Alliances, 7) former Vice President for Global Operations and Marketing, 8) Vice President of Systems Engineering and Technology Marketing, 9) Vice President of Hardware Engineering, 10) Vice President of Software Engineering, and 11) Vice President of Manufacturing and Platform Engineering all were employed by Cisco prior to joining Arista. Moreover, four out of the seven members of Arista's Board of Directors were previously employed by Cisco.