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ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk?

Posted by Sander_Marechal on · 2 comments
Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog; By Jonathan Schwartz 		Mail this story
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About a month ago, Network Appliance sued Sun to try to stop the competitive impact of ZFS on their business. Their objectives were clear - number one, they'd like us to unfree ZFS, to retract it from the free software community. Second, they want us to limit ZFS's allowable field of use to computers - and to forbid its use in storage devices. So later this week, we're going to use our defensive patent portfolio to respond to Network Appliance, filing a comprehensive reciprocal suit. As a part of this suit, we are requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of their filer products from the marketplace, and are examining the original NFS license - on which Network Appliance was started. By opting to litigate vs. innovate, they are disrupting their customers and employees across the world.

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Comments (2)

tuxchick ·
Apparently Sun threw the first punch, and is not the innocent victim Mr. Schwartz is making them out to be: http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/2007/09/netapp-sues-sun.html "About 18 months ago, Sun’s lawyers contacted NetApp with a list of patents they say we infringe, and requested that we pay them lots of money."
number6x ·
It looks even more complicated than that: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/on_patent_trolling

So StorageTek and Net App were sparring over this before Sun aquired Storage Tek.

Sun couldn't throw the first punch if the fists were flying before they got involved. It may be that Storage Tek swung first. Jonathon Schwartz says no, but he wasn't involved yet, so would he really know?

Quoting:"NetApps first approached StorageTek behind the cover of a third party intermediary (yes, it sounds weird, doesn't it?) seeking to purchase STK patents. After Sun acquired STK, we were not willing to sell the patents, We've always been willing to license them. But instead of engaging in licensing discussions, NetApp decided to file a suit to invalidate them. To be clear, we never filed a complaint or threatened to do so, nor did anyone, to the best of my knowledge, in the ZFS community. "


I think this is a CEO-said / CEO-said kind of thing.

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