Cisco Systems of San Jose on Friday lodged two federal lawsuits against Arista Networks, claiming the Santa Clara competitor has infringed on several of Cisco s key computer-networking technologies.
The heart of our action regards Arista s deliberate inclusion in its products of 12 discrete and important Cisco features covered by 14 different U.S. patents, said Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler in a company blog. They were patented by individuals who worked for Cisco and are now at Arista, or who at Cisco worked with executives who are now at Arista.
Noting that Cisco rarely files such suits, Chandler said Arista s infringement was too blatant to ignore, adding that entire sections of our copyrighted user manuals, complete with grammatical errors, are included in Arista s documentation.
Arista did not immediately respond to this newspapers request for comment.
Photo by Paul Sakuma, AP
