Tic-Tac-Toe…
October 29th, 2008 by 
Steven J. Schwartz
Image by tnarik via Flickr
Joshua: Shall we play a game?
David Lightman: Oh!
Jennifer: I think it missed him.
David Lightman: Yeah. Weird isn’t it? Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?
David Lightman: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.
Over the past few weeks/months NetApp and SUN Microsystems have been in a legal battle over patent infringement. These arguments are about ZFS and WAFL. There seem to be 
specifically a little over half a dozen patents that NetApp has filed ZFS is infringing on. At the end of the day (today), both NetApp and SUN are growing revenues around WAFL and ZFS. In fact, this publicity, has taken the obscure ZFS and “Open Storage” infused product line from SUN and made it much more public, and it seems to be showing up in more places daily.
So why the movie reference? They way these types of legal battles play out, in the end, there is no winner. Legal fees, the man hours, the courts time, and in the end the only one who suffers will be the customer and share holders. Customers will absorb the costs of the legal and PR fight, share holders will suffer with every new press release.
For the most recent reading on this check out Dave Hitz’s blog, he references the recent releases by SUN’s legal team as well.
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Posted in Enterprise, NetApp, SAN and NAS, SUN, WAFL, ZFS | 
2 Comments »
October 29th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Your choice of media references leads this reader to make a logical assumption that you left out: NetApp and Sun should stop this false war before it destroys one or both of them. They’ve proved that they can invalidate patents. What happens when this happens? Two massive companies are left with less IP, and thus less value. They need to settle this lawsuit.
October 29th, 2008 at 8:16 am
There is no winner?
Let me be the contrarian here.
I think both companies benefit from having its products showcased in forums and op-ed articles, such as this. Any kind of publicity is theoretically good publicity.
Moreover, does this push the cost of products up, impacting both customers and shareholders?
I think customers are largely immune. If the product’s too expensive in comparison to its peers, they won’t buy. They won’t buy if the Capex/Opex savings aren’t demonstrable or if there are lower cost alternative solutions from competitors.
It does however hurt the shareholders – it costs the company opex, makes the products less competitive and leaves a bad taste in the mouths of prospective customers, who are concerned about their purchases being caught in the IP crossfire.
Geoff @ Dell