c0t0d0s0.org

Mike Dillon published some news in his blog about the NTAP vs. Sun. The development looks really positive for Sun:

Most significantly, the Court found each of the asserted claims in NetApp's 7,200,715 patent relating to RAID technology to be "indefinite" - [...]. 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.

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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.

The ZFS information pageis already updated in regard of this new documents.

Robin from storagemojo wrote an interesting comment about the The Hitz report (Dave Hitz´s declaration in the Sun/NetApp lawsuit):

The NetApp/Sun patent battle continues. I don’t see how NetApp can win this, given the Supreme Court’s Teleflex decision, which makes prior art a question that can be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
But the company is doggedly pursuing the battle, and Dave Hitz’s recent declaration - which he hoped would remain private - has been unsealed.

Jonathan comments in Thank you, Network Appliance the lawsuit filed by NetApp

NetApps first approached StorageTek behind the cover of a third party intermediary (yes, it sounds weird, doesn't it?) seeking to purchase STK patents. After Sun acquired STK, we were not willing to sell the patents, We've always been willing to license them. But instead of engaging in licensing discussions, NetApp decided to file a suit to invalidate them. To be clear, we never filed a complaint or threatened to do so, nor did anyone, to the best of my knowledge, in the ZFS community.

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Finally, and perhaps most importantly (again, read here for why), I'd like to thank our friends at NetApps for ensuring every single customer in their installed base is aware of the outstanding economics offered by ZFS as a file system and storage virtualization platform.

PS: As usual in Jonathans blog, the URLs of his entries speak for themself: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/on_patent_trolling

The last few days there were some media buzz about FISHwork and the usability as the foundation for an Anti-NetApp-Device. I hope it´s obvious, that it would be quite easy for Network Appliance to build a Anti-Anti-NetApp device.

How? Use the weapon of your enemy (or competitor) and use it against him. From the hardware side NetApp-Filer are not much more than glorified x86 servers. So it would relatively easy for them to use Opensolaris as the foundation for their systems. As they can extend it without giving the changes back to the community, this would be a viable business model with the possibility for differentations (for example with an FC target mode for Solaris) without the hassle to develop an scalable and competitive operating environment on your own.