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Barracuda Networks Countersues Trend Micro

By Pamela Jones et al.

There's some news on the Trend Micro v.Barracuda Networks case. That is the one where Trend Micro sued Barracuda over ClamAV and brought a complaint to the International Trade Commission. Barracuda has just filed a countersuit in California, alleging patent infringement by Trend Micro. They say it's a defensive use of three patents they bought from IBM. Barracuda asks for money damages and an injunction on further sales of infringing Trend Micro products.

They plan to contribute proceeds, if they win, to the open source community. "We are grateful to the open source community, many of whom have contributed significant prior art in our ongoing case against Trend Micro," Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks, is quoted as saying in the press release, which I'll share with you. That would include us. This news follows the media reports that a Groklaw member came up with some very valuable prior art for Barracuda on top of all that you guys turned up as a group.

You know how Red Hat said when it first started to file for patents that it was exclusively for defense purposes? Here's an example of when some software patents can come in handy.

Full post as published by Groklaw on July 02, 2008 (boomark / email).