CSCO Cisco Systems Inc

Arista Networks Inc. on Monday filed antitrust charges against Cisco Systems Inc., escalating a legal battle that began when Cisco accused the smaller networking-equipment company of infringing its patents and copyrights.

The new allegations, part of Arista's response to Cisco's December 2014 lawsuit, focus largely on the way Cisco's widely used switching and routing devices are programmed.

Arista and other hardware makers emulate portions of programming instructions used by Cisco, which are issued using what the industry calls a command-line interface, or CLI. Cisco's suit alleged that Arista violated its copyrights by doing so.

In the new counterclaims, Arista contends that Cisco engaged in a kind of bait-and-switch gambit. First, the networking giant permitted rivals to use what it called an "industry-standard" feature. Then, after competitors and customers were locked into using the technology, Cisco began asserting copyright protection over the technology, Arista said.

"This litigation is not about protecting copyrightable expression in commonly used CLI commands," Arista stated, in court papers filed Monday in federal court in San Jose, Calif. "Rather, this litigation is an effort to debilitate a company that is disrupting Cisco's long-standing dominant position in this market with better technology."

Besides the interface issue, Arista alleged that Cisco illegally raised the price of its support services to customers who used a mix of Cisco hardware and competing products.

The Arista counterclaims come two days before the U.S. International Trade Commission is scheduled to rule on Cisco's request to bar imports of Arista products at issue in patent claims that Cisco filed with the agency, in addition to its claims in federal court.

"Arista's filing of bogus antitrust claims today is not accidental or a coincidence," said Mark Chandler, Cisco's senior vice president and general counsel. "It is a smokescreen to divert attention from the important ruling expected from the International Trade Commission later this week."

Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif., has long been the largest provider of equipment used to connect computers together and to the Internet. Arista, founded in 2004, has built a sizable niche in switching systems. The company, whose top executives worked previously at Cisco, went public in 2014 and reached a market valuation of more than $4 billion.

Unlike many large tech companies, Cisco mostly has shied away from seeking royalties on its many patents or filing suits against competitors. But the company has said Arista's copying of its intellectual property was so egregious that it had to take action.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 25, 2016 16:05 ET (21:05 GMT)

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