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A Sun Update on the NetApp Litigation

By Pamela Jones et al.

Recently, I did an update on the Sun/NetApp litigation, but now there is something better, an update by Mike Dillon, Sun's General Counsel. What a great name for a lawyer it would be if he parents had named him Matt. He says thank you to all who helped with prior art:

After NetApp sued Sun, we responded with six reexamination requests on the patents asserted by NetApp. Reexamination is a procedure in which a party submits documents (prior art) relating to a patent to the US Patent Office (PTO) and asks that it reconsider whether that patent should have ever been issued. If the PTO agrees and determines there is a "substantial new question of patentability" (SNQP) it will grant the request and reopen the patent examination process on that patent. Included in our requests was a significant amount of highly relevant prior art that was not considered by the PTO when it first granted the NetApp patents. (By the way, to those of you who submitted prior art - "thank you!")

Over the last two months, the PTO has granted the first five of our reexamination requests, finding in all the cases that multiple "SNQP" exist for each patent (one request filed in June is still pending).

That would include you guys, prominently so, and I wanted you to know your efforts were effective and appreciated. But there's another part I wanted to highlight. It has to do with ethics.

Full post as published by Groklaw on June 26, 2008 (boomark / email).