In-House Counsel

More on the NetApp litigation

By legalthing

I recently read Judge Laporte's Order Construing Claims in the NetApp v. Sun litigation. Judge Laporte is the United States Magistrate Judge who is hearing this case in the Federal Court for the Northern District of California. Reading the order was again a reminder of the breadth and diversity of cases that judges are called to consider. These include everything from antitrust, personal injury and employment lawsuits, to cases involving conflicts over ERISA and some even more unique disputes.

Which makes it all the more impressive when a judge is also able to understand and render a decision relating to highly complex technologies in a patent case as part of a Markman hearing. For those who don't practice in this area, a Markman hearing (taking its name from the case of Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc.) is a pre-trial procedure in which each party presents briefs, tutorials and expert witness testimony to establish the meaning of key terms in disputed patents. Aside from the actual trial, the Markman hearing is the most important part of a patent infringement litigation.

On August 27, 2008, the Markman hearing was held before Judge Laporte. In dispute were fourteen phrases in seven patents (four asserted by Sun and three by NetApp) that required the court to determine the meaning of terms like "Domain Name", "Non-volatile Storage Means" and "Root Inode", among others. Given the complexity, we were impressed when only two weeks later, the judge issued her order.

And, we were very pleased.

In summary, the court agreed with Sun's interpretation on six of the disputed terms (two of which the court adopted with slight modification) and with NetApp on one. As to the remaining terms, the court either formulated its own interpretation or requested that the parties propose a further construction (i.e. definition). If you want to read the Order from the Markman hearing you can find it here.

Most significantly, the Court found each of the asserted claims in NetApp's 7,200,715 patent relating to RAID technology to be "indefinite" - meaning that someone with experience in this area of technology could not understand the limits of the claimed invention. With regard to NetApp's '715 patent, the court agreed with Sun's position that the claims of the patent are flatly inconsistent with and impossible under the teaching of the patent specification. In effect, unless NetApp appeals and this finding is reversed, the '715 patent is effectively invalidated in this case and against others in the future.

In addition, the Court's findings on the terms "server identification data", "domain name", "portion of a communication" "element of a communication" and "completing a write operation within a local processing node" further strengthen our position that the processors, network interface and systems management software used across NetApp's product line infringe Sun's patents.

Meanwhile ZFS and OpenStorage continue to gain momentum.

Full post as published by The Legal Thing... on October 02, 2008 (boomark / email).