Jury rules in favour of Arista in patent dispute with Cisco

A jury has found in favour of Arista Networks in a long-running patent and copyright dispute with technology company Cisco.

Cisco originally sued Arista for copyright and patent infringement at the US District Court for the Northern District of California in December 2014.

In the suit, Cisco said that Arista infringed one or more patent claims.

The technology company argued that Arista infringed its copyright, which included Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) 11.0, Cisco IOS 11.1 and Cisco IOS 11.2.

According to the suit, a “key component” of Cisco’s IOS software is “command-line interface” (CLI). The CLI is the user interface by which users of Cisco products communicate with the product in order to configure and manage the product.

Further, Cisco cited one patent in the suit, US number 7,047,526, titled “Generic command interface for multiple executable routines”.

Cisco said that, “rather than invest in the expensive and time-consuming effort that would have been necessary to develop its own features for Arista’s products, and specifically instead of investing the time and expense of developing its own CLI, Arista decided to simply copy Cisco’s unique approach and pioneering proprietary technologies”.

Cisco asked for statutory damages, lost profits suffered by the company, expenses, costs, attorneys’ fees, pre- and post-judgment interest, and a trial by jury.

Yesterday, December 14, a jury at the Northern District of California, San Jose Division cleared Arista of infringing any of Cisco’s copyrighted technical manuals.

The jury said that Arista did not directly infringe or induce infringement of two claims of the ‘526 patent. The jury also found that Arista did not contributorily infringe two claims of the patent.

Although the jury ruled that Cisco successfully argued that Arista infringed its copyright for its user interfaces, it said Arista had proved fair use.

This week, WIPR reported that Cisco had won a separate patent dispute with Arista at the US International Trade Commission.