Azul and Sun Microsystems settle patent lawsuit

June 20, 2007, 08:18 AM —  IDG News Service — 

Azul Systems Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have settled a patent infringement suit Sun filed, the companies said Tuesday.

The suit had been pending in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California since May 2006, said Scott Sellers, chief operating office and co-founder of Azul.

Sun alleged that Azul violated trade secrets and patent laws.

Azul, founded in 2002, makes high capacity computing appliances. The company had hired some former Sun employees, including Stephen DeWitt, its CEO.

"We're very pleased to disclose this [settlement]. This has been in the works for some time. Both sides realize they're spending a lot of money and this would have taken another year," Sellers said.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, presiding over the case, had made some pretrial rulings on motions that were adverse to Sun, which prompted the company to agree to settlement talks, Sellers said.

Sun tells a different story.

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Sun spokeswoman Kristi Rawlinson said Azul agreed to settle because Sun was building a stronger case against Azul as the lawsuit went on.

"The patent infringement and trade secret claims against Azul grew larger during the pendency of the case," Rawlinson stated. "Azul came to the realization it would be better to return to negotiations and settle the claims, rather than continue with the lawsuit they initiated."

The case relates to technology for improving the performance of microprocessors through the use of chip multithreading, which Azul is now using in its products. Sun claims Azul infringed patents related to Sun's prior research in the field, and that it abused trade secrets by poaching about a dozen Sun employees familiar with the technology.

In a blog posting, Michael Dillon, Sun's chief legal counsel, declined to discuss terms of the settlement, as did Azul's Sellers.

» posted by ITworld staff

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace