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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.

and

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.

Network Appliannce works really hard on the title "major annoyment": NetApp posts a benchmark for an EMC Clariion device. This will spark some heated discussions in the next few days

Interesting development - IBM and NTAP were downgraded to "neutral" by UBS:

International Business Machines (IBM) and Network Appliance (NTAP) were both downgraded to neutral from buy at UBS, on concerns over slowing spending in 2008.

You will find the our second complaint ("The California-Complaint") in reaction to the NTAP litigations at the resource part of Mike Dillons blog.

Sun filed in reaction to the NTAP allegations a second lawsuit. Mike Dillon, our general counsel, writes in his blog:

Today, we filed a second complaint against NetApp for infringement of six additional patents and other related claims. Although it may appear a separate case, it is in reality, part of the same litigation originally brought by NetApp in Eastern Texas to impede the adoption of ZFS.

The second complaint was filed at a court in Northern California. This is the area where both companies are located and it´s a more sensible choice than the court in Patenttrollville ... errr ... Eastern Texas.

Chris Mellor writes about the NTAP/Sun lawsuits and thinks, that NTAP can´t win from a business perspective:

What someone needs to do, perhaps, is to look Dan Warmenhoven in the eye, someone whom Warmenhoven respects absolutely, and say: "Discretion sir, discretion is the better part of valour. This engagement against Sun is one you cannot, in any real business sense, win."

As your are in gods hands on sea and in front of courts lets think about the both possible outcomes: When NTAP wins, they have a strong competitor less, but the image of beeing a patent troll. A marketing disaster. When Sun wins, NTAP may loose it´s technical foundation (albeit at least some patents should never been granted as of prior art. Perhaps this is the reason for sueing in Texas when both companies are located in northern California). And so i close this snippet with another quote from Chris:

Is NetApp constitutionally averse to negotiation and compromise? Does it have a secret interest in funnelling money to lawyers? Does it fear ZFS so very, very much that it sees itself being squeezed unbearably between ZFS-spreading Sun, a rampant EMC, and myriad NAS and iSCSI minnows snapping at its heels?
If any one of these questions has a 'yes' answer then there is something deeply wrong inside a company that many in the storage industry have a deep respect for.

Ashlee did a nice analysis about the ongoing dispute in the blogs of Jonathan and Dave Hitz:

Given that the blogging back-and-forth adds no muscle to the actual dispute between the companies, we're surprised that Hitz has chosen to continue on this quest given the obvious public relations disaster that NetApp faces.

and

To that commenter's point, Schwart'z blog posts mostly rely on rhetoric surrounding the merits of open source software and the expensive, proprietary nature of NetApp's products. Schwartz also finds plenty of time to plug Sun's storage gear. Hitz, meanwhile, issues a not so pleasant post about how NetApp employees need not worry about keeping their jobs just because Sun has countersued NetApp seeking to stop shipments of all its major products. Hitz tries to reassure his staff and customers, although just talking about NetApp's demise - however unlikely - feels like an awful thing for an executive to dwell on in public.

Grooklaw summarizes an observation in The NetApp-Sun Patent Litigation Is On: Anyone Know of Any Prior Art?

I also feel that when a company open sources its own code, the immediate response shouldn't be punishment by litigation to try to make it stop. IBM has been through it and now Sun. IBM was guilty of nothing at all, at least from all we've seen in the litigation. Nothing except supporting Open Source and Linux. Now Sun decides to join the Open Source fun, and wham, litigation. I begin to discern a pattern. I guess the proprietary folks have a strategy to use patents as the battering ram.

Today we filed our response to the allegations made by Network Appliance: You can find an explanation of Suns reaction in the blog of our general counsel, Mike Dillon, as well as the response send to the court.