Trade commission finds Arista infringed on two original Cisco patents

The current ruling adds yet another twist to the ongoing patent and copyright infringement case between Cisco and Arista.

The legal ping-pong battle between Cisco and Arista on Thursday found Cisco on the winning side as in the International Trade Commission ruled that Arista switches violate two Cisco patents the company says are key technologies in its pantheon Of network switching.

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Mark Chandler, senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of Cisco, wrote in a blog of the Commission's specific decision that Arista was:

    In violation of U.S. Patent 6,377,577 ("Processing of Hardware Access Control Lists")
    In violation of U.S. Patent 7,224,668 ("Security of traffic flow control and management plans")

"The 577 patent, the inventor of which is the president and founder of Arista, Andy Bechtolsheim, who presumably knew his own invention when designing Arista products, is a fundamental invention of Cisco that improves the Processing on network devices, "said Chandler. "The '668 patent encompasses a central Cisco invention to improve network device security and helps, among other things, prevent denial of service attacks. Like our other patents that Arista was found to infringe, these inventions were Developed by Cisco employees and remain crucial to the cutting-edge products we sell. "

Chandler wrote that "confirming the Initial Determination of Administrative Judge McNamara, the Commission brings the confirmed total of violations of the Arista patent to five." Today's ruling in "Investigation 945" concludes the Commission's review of the two cases presented By Cisco in December 2014, "Chandler said. "The Commission's decision is the latest of several findings that Arista has intentionally and illegally copied Cisco's proprietary technology, as the Commission stated in its less-drafted version of the 944 ruling, which was made public only two weeks ago , "Arista's behavior evidences a corporate culture of copying," and finding that at best, Arista was "deliberately blind." Intellectual Property is Cisco's copy culture that has targeted its legal action. "

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Today's ITC decision also included a recommended remedy consisting of an import ban and an order to cease and desist, and Arista will pay a 5% bonus on covered products sold or imported during a prescribed presidential term. These affect all Arista switches. The burden lies with Arista to demonstrate that any changes he makes to his products will be enough to prevent further violations, Chandler said. "Now begins the 60-day presidential review period for this case, which expires on July 4, 2017. At that time, barring a highly improbable intervention by the US Trade Representative on behalf of the President, the new ITC will enter into force - prohibit the import, sale and distribution of Arista products in the United States "

The ruling was mentioned during Arista's announcement of Q1 2017 earnings today.

In response to an analyst's question about the findings, Marc Taxay, Arista's vice president and general counsel, stated: "There are two intellectual property rights [inter partes review - a procedure to challenge the validity of a United States patent The United States Patent Office] which have been instituted in the '668 and' 577 patents, which were patents that were found to have been infringed in 945. There were hearings held in the PTAB [Patents of Trial and Appeal Board] in March, and the final decisions of the PTAB will be issued before June 11. Therefore, as you probably already know, there is a 60-day review period - presidential review period after the issuance of the determination So that the decisions of the PTAB will come out several weeks before that, "Taxay said. [A complete transcript of the Arista call is available at the end of the ITC. Available on the Seeking Alpha site here].

"At this stage, obviously, we have been evaluating our design strategy. Obviously, we are preparing that strategy in case we lose intellectual property rights. And as I said, we just received the final determination, so we have to go through The actual written opinion to see how it flows through.But certainly, our plan would be based on our review of that.We have several different options that we are evaluating, and we will have something together