My storage team and I focus on three of the most important aspects in any industry: customers, competitors and market trends. There is insight to gain and share in this role, so here is our take on Sun and Storage - Taylor Allis
NetApp's David Hitz Declaration
I have made it a point to not comment or offer opinion on the ongoing NetApp litigation for obvious reasons - I'll leave that task up to Sun's lawyers and our Chief General Counsel.
Fortunately, the court recently unsealed a document in the ongoing litigation. So for anyone interested in details; a copy of a declaration from NetApp's co-founder and EVP, Dave Hitz, can be viewed below:
Below are some quotes taken directly from the document:
On patents being discussed that revolve around Sun ZFS and NetApp's WAFL technology:
"Sun's ZFS technology appears to be a conscious reimplementation of NetApp's innovative WAFL filesystem, as admitted by the creators of ZFS: 'The fie system that has come closest to our design principles, other than ZFS itself, is WAFL...the first commercial file system to use the copy-on-write tree of blocks approach to file system consistency.'"
On Sun open sourcing ZFS software:
"Irreparable harm to NetApp through Sun's open sourcing of ZFS:
Sun has open-sourced ZFS and thereby given away for free NetApp's patented technology to anyone that wants to download a copy. That means Sun has created infringing computer code and made it easy for software users and software companies everywhere to infringe, instead of having users compensate NetApp for its technology through normal product purchases. This is not much different from the problems caused when an entity builds a business by distributing for free infringing copies of music. In both cases, there are practical problems in any attempt to recover the infringing copies or to enforce rights against everyone that has downloaded copies of the infringing software. One difference is that adoption of ZFS requires time because it is a software program and not just a song. The next two or three years are very significant for the proliferation of ZFS and it is vital to shut down Sun's distribution promptly."
Mike Dillon updates us that Sun submitted 6 reexamination requests on the patents asserted by NetApp to the US Patent Office (PTO); asking that it reconsider whether those patents should have ever been issued. According to Mr. Dillon, the PTO has already issued a first action rejecting all the claims of one patent - no 6,857,001. Sun has also asserted 22 patents in response against NetApp's product line.
On Sun freely licensing ZFS to other companies:
"Sun is not the only company that could potentially hurt NetApp's market position. Because Sun freely licenses ZFS to other companies, it is possible that the entire competitive profile of the data storage market might change within the next 3-5 years.
REDACTED
Moreover, because ZFS is open-sourced, it lowers the barier to entry for startup companies to bring products incorporating ZFS technology to market and start competing with NetApp. Indeed, because Sun is distributing ZFS at no cost, it dramatically lowers the product development costs for any company, not just startups."
I encourage anyone to read the document in its full context. For any legal updates, be sure to bookmark Mike's Blog.
Posted at 02:11PM Jul 01, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence | Comments[0]
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