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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.

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.

I wrote in my articles about the CEC that Jonathan looked really pissed about the patent lawsuit at a certain court in Texas (in my opinion, this says enough about the claims). And my inkling about Jonathans opinion wasn´t false: He is really pissed . Just have a look at his latest blog entry - "ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk?". I think this blog entry and the preannouncment of an reciprocal lawsuit is something like the last call to Network Appliance to return to a sane behaviour before it gets nasty. And nasty means really nasty:

And to be clear, once again, we have no interest whatever in suing NetApps - we didn't before this case, and we don't now. But given the impracticality of what they're seeking as resolution, to take back an innovation that helps their customers as much as ours, we have no choice but to respond in court.
So later this week, we're going to use our defensive portfolio to respond to Network Appliance, filing a comprehensive reciprocal suit. As a part of this suit, we are requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of their filer products from the marketplace, and are examining the original NFS license - on which Network Appliance was started. [...]
In addition to seeking the removal of their products from the marketplace, we will be going after sizable monetary damages. And I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform (in specific, The Software Freedom Law Center and the Peer to Patent initiative), and to the legal defense of free software innovators.

I really hope that Network Appliance will step back from their lawsuit. We need both companies. Only a healthy competition will drive innovation.

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.

and

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

Mads pointed me to this good article written by Greg regarding software patents:

Will we stop pursuing software patents on our software? Can't do that yet. That's simply because our competitors will still go for them, and unless our system changes, we'd have fewer "trading stamps" and end up paying even higher rates to indemnify the users of our software.

At the end, the patent systems gone wild somewhere in the past in the software space. Even when you don´t like it, you have to go for it, as other would do it. And nobody would step back first, as all participants are in fear that all other market participants would use this as the competitive weapon. It´s the classical mexican standoff.

Microsoft states, that Linux violates 235 of their patents. I assume, that this number is greatly exaggerated. But: Even when your enemy has 235 bullets, one is sufficient to kill you. And the interesting question is: Can you dodge 235 bullets? Interesting times ahead.

There even seems to be a raging cold war regarding this topic. Roger Parlof of Fortune wirtes in Microsoft takes on the free world:

So if Microsoft ever sued Linux distributor Red Hat for patent infringement, for instance, OIN might sue Microsoft in retaliation, trying to enjoin distribution of Windows. It's a cold war, and what keeps the peace is the threat of mutually assured destruction: patent Armageddon - an unending series of suits and countersuits that would hobble the industry and its customers.