Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Cisco v. Arista

Cisco's statement:
In the thirteen years I’ve been General Counsel of Cisco, I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve initiated suit against a competitor, supplier or customer. 
It’s therefore only after thoughtful and serious consideration that we are today filing two lawsuits to stop Arista’s repeated and pervasive copying of key inventions in Cisco products. These suits cover key Cisco proprietary patented features and Cisco’s copyrighted materials.
Arista's response:
"The networking industry is in the midst of a revitalization as the value shifts from boxes to cloud networking software (a shift which is causing apparent consternation at Cisco). Arista is winning the software battle in the cloud, so Cisco has chosen to do what others did to it previously and is attempting to use the legal system to cover for its lack of innovation in software 
I was the General Counsel at Cisco in the 1990’s when it was being attacked in much the same way as Arista is today. Cisco faced this same challenge from the legacy vendors in the 1990’s, and the legacy vendors also wrongly used litigation to slow down innovation. I agreed with Mr. Chambers quote then and I agree with it even more now. “Symbolically it’s huge,” Mr. Chambers said of the suit. “It shows that some companies don’t have a way to compete in this new market.” 
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/23/business/the-markets-market-place-cisco-systems-is-giving-up-partner-hunt.html"

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