Cisco wins patent dispute against Arista at USITC
Technology company Cisco has won a patent infringement dispute against a computer networking business at the US International Trade Commission (ITC).
On Friday, December 9, ITC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Mary Joan McNamara ruled that Arista Networks infringed two patents owned by Cisco.
In the initial determination, McNamara found that US patent numbers 6,377,577 and 7,224,668 were infringed.
The administrative law judge (ALJ) did not find any violation of US patent numbers 7,023,853, 7,061,875, 7,460,492 and 8,051,211.
The ‘577 patent, titled “Access control list processing in hardware”, was registered at the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTAB) in 2002. The ‘668 patent is called “Control plane security and traffic flow management” and was registered in 2007.
Both patents are owned by Cisco.
In an official blog post, Mark Chandler, senior vice president, general counsel and secretary at Cisco, said that the judge’s ruling is important in the company’s effort to “stop Arista from using our intellectual property”.
Chandler also said that McNamara’s decision brings the total number of Arista infringements of Cisco patents to five.
In June this year, the ITC ruled that Arista infringed three patents that cover Cisco’s private VLAN network security technology and its SysDB technology. The ITC also said that Arista did not violate section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 for two US patent numbers in the case.
According to Chandler, as a result of that ruling, a cease-and-desist order was put in place, but “because Arista continued to sell despite these orders”, the ITC started this current action in September.
Marc Taxay, senior vice president, general counsel for Arista, said at the time: “Arista respects the commission’s decision and intends to fully comply with the orders.”
On the recent ITC decision, Taxay said: "Cisco has asserted the '577 and '668 patents against widely used networking technologies. The '577 patent, in particular, was asserted against technology integrated into merchant silicon chips that Arista purchases from third parties."
He added that each of the patents is subject to inter partes review challenging their validity at the PTAB.
Taxay said: “We appreciate the tireless work of the ALJ in this preliminary decision and are pleased that she found in our favour on four of the asserted patents. We do, however, strongly believe that our products do not infringe any of the patents under investigation and look forward to presenting our case to the full commission.”
According to a release by Arista, the company intends to request a review by the full commission of the ALJ’s findings.
If granted, the full commission is expected to issue a final determination on this matter in April 2017.
While still subject to review, Arista intends to fully address the infringement findings with design-arounds for its products.
