Mosaid End Patent Suit against VMware

Case Filed: Au 09, 2011

Case Closed: Jul 11, 2014

Judge: Gregory M. Sleet

Court: Delaware District Court

Case Summary:

Canada-based Mosaid Technologies, developer of semiconductor memory technology filed suit against Delaware-based Adobe Systems alleging infringement on two of their patents related to the field of multi-processor digital computer systems. Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Juniper, Netapp, Red Hat and VMware were the other defendants in the suit.

Patents-in-Suit:

The patents at issue were:

• US5892914 entitled ‘System for accessing distributed data cache at each network node to pass requests and data,’ issued on Apr 06, 1999 and expiring by Feb 26, 2017
• US6505241 entitled ‘Network intermediate node cache serving as proxy to client node to request missing data from server,’ issued on Jan 07, 2003 and expiring by Jun 03, 2012

The patents are currently assigned to RPX Corporation (source: MaxVal’s Assignment Database) and according to the complaint, Mosaid is the owner of the patents. The patents describe a digital computer system capable of projecting larger data images, over greater distances, at higher bandwidths and with much better consistency than the existing data caching mechanisms.

As in Complaint:

Mosaid alleged that the products manufactured by defendants infringe claims of the ‘914 and ‘241 patents as the accused products constitute a material part of the patented technology. The products cited were: Adobe flash memory server, Alcatel velocix digital media delivery platform, IBM WebSphere software, Juniper media flow, NetApp flexcache, VMware vFabric GemFire platform, RedHat enterprise linux with resilient storage add-on and enterprise server V6. The complaint said, Mosaid is entitled to recovery of past damages, at a minimum, a reasonable royalty.

Case Conclusion:

In 2011, Netapp was dismissed due to Mosaid filing a voluntary dismissal. The parties including: Adobe, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Juniper and Red Hat were terminated from the case in 2012. The case proceeded with VMware as the only defendant and in July 2014, Mosaid filed a stipulation of dismissal, following which the court granted and ordered all claims dismissed with prejudice, with each party bearing its own costs, expenses and attorneys' fees.

See 1:11-cv-00698 for more details. To get alerts on cases filed/closed, subscribe to our Litigation Alerts.

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