Veeam Software, the innovative
provider of solutions that deliver Availability for the Modern Data
Center, today announced that the first patent litigation Symantec
brought against Veeam in February of 2012 effectively ends with a
resounding victory for Veeam.
Last month, Symantec dismissed its Federal Circuit appeal of the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office’s decision to cancel all asserted claims of
the final remaining patent asserted by Symantec in that district court
action, U.S. Pat. No. 7,093,086. When it first sued Veeam, Symantec
asserted that Veeam’s products infringed various claims from four
Symantec patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,093,086, 6,931,558, 7,191,299, and
7,254,682. Over the next three years, Veeam either forced Symantec to
dismiss the asserted claims of the patents with prejudice in the
district court action or obtained rulings from the USPTO that the
asserted patent claims were invalid in the Inter Partes Review
proceedings initiated by Veeam, or both. The first case is now over, and
Symantec cannot assert these patent claims against Veeam’s current
products again.
“This is a big victory for Veeam. I am pleased with the USPTO rulings.
This case shows that Veeam will not back down in the face of threats,
even when those threats are made by a large company like Symantec,” said
Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam.
In the Inter Partes Review proceedings that Veeam brought against
Symantec’s asserted patents, the USPTO invalidated:
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Claims 1, 11, 12, and 22 of U.S. Pat. No. 7,093,086.
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Claims 1-15, 17-23 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,931,558.
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Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 14, and 15 of U.S. Pat. No. 7,191,299.
In March and August of 2013, Symantec dismissed with prejudice the ’558,
’299, and ’682 patents from the case.
In October 2012, Symantec filed a second patent infringement case
against Veeam, asserting that Veeam’s products infringed claims from
four additional patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,024,527, 8,117,168, 7,831,861,
and 7,480,822. In October 2013, Veeam filed Inter Partes Review
proceedings against these four patents to invalidate the asserted
claims, and in April 2014, the USPTO determined that Veeam established a
reasonable likelihood of proving that those asserted claims are indeed
invalid. The USPTO should issue final decisions about the validity of
the asserted patent claims in those four proceedings in April 2015. In
the meantime, Symantec joined Veeam’s motion to stay the district court
proceedings pending the outcome of the USPTO’s April decision, and the
district court stayed the case.
Veeam is represented in the District Court and USPTO proceedings by Mark
Fox Evens, Lori A. Gordon, Byron L. Pickard, Michael Q. Lee, Michael B.
Ray, Jonathan M. Strang, and Daniel S. Block of the law firm Sterne,
Kessler, Goldstein and Fox, P.L.L.C.