Jury Rules for Arista in Cisco Copyright Case--Update
December 14 2016 - 6:05PM
Dow Jones News
By Don Clark
A federal jury sided with Arista Networks Inc. in a closely
watched copyright case brought by Cisco Systems Inc. against its
upstart rival in the networking equipment market.
The San Jose, Calif., jury found that Arista wasn't liable for
infringing a Cisco copyright and found that Arista didn't infringe
a Cisco patent, representative of the companies said. Jurors
awarded Cisco no damages.
At issue in the case was whether Arista was guilty of copyright
infringement for adopting many of the same commands for configuring
its hardware that Cisco developed for managing its own equipment.
Cisco asserted that Arista could have used its own commands --
known in the industry as a command-line interface, or CLI -- but
instead misappropriated more than 500 commands that Cisco
copyrighted.
Arista argued that its actions were legal because Cisco's
commands had evolved over the years into an industry standard that
many companies and equipment users have adopted. Cisco, in
response, presented evidence that other companies used a much
narrower set of copyrighted commands.
The jury, while concluding that Arista did infringe Cisco's
interface commands, also accepted Arista's argument that its
actions were permissible under a legal doctrine called "scenes a
faire." The French phrase relates to situations in which creative
works are dictated by circumstance, as in cases where software
needs to be compatible with technical standards or certain
hardware.
Arista's stock rose 3% on the news.
Similar issues arose in a long-running copyright infringement
case brought by Oracle Corp. against Alphabet Inc.'s Google unit.
That case focused on application program interfaces, or APIs,
computer code that helps programs, websites or apps talk to one
another. A federal jury in May found that Google's use didn't
infringe Oracle's intellectual property because it constituted fair
use under copyright law.
A Cisco spokeswoman said in an emailed statement that it will
review the details of the ruling and determine its options for
post-trial motions or appeal. "We respectfully disagree with the
verdict," she said.
Jayshree Ullal, Arista's chief executive, termed the verdict "a
moral victory for the entire networking industry."
Cisco is the biggest maker of switching systems used to connect
servers inside data centers and to the internet. But Arista, the
chairman and chief executive of which are former Cisco executives,
has grabbed a substantial chunk of the market since its founding in
2004.
The San Jose, Calif., networking giant first accused Arista of
copyright and patent infringement in December 2014. A portion of
the battle has recently been waged at the International Trade
Commission, which can block import of products it finds to have
infringed a U.S. company's patents.
Cisco last week persuaded an ITC administrative law judge that
Arista infringed two of its patents. Arista said it would ask the
full commission to review the ruling, which would likely result in
a final determination in April.
The ITC this year ordered an import ban on Arista hardware in
connection with separate patent infringement allegations brought by
Cisco. Arista subsequently modified its products to exclude
technology covered by Cisco's intellectual property.
Arista recently convinced U.S. Customs and Border Protection
officials that modified versions of its products aren't covered by
the import ban. Cisco is asking the ITC for an additional ruling to
block the Arista imports.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 14, 2016 17:50 ET (22:50 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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