HP, EMC fall out over patents
HP, EMC fall out over patents
Hewlett-Packard and EMC, the biggest and third biggest storage vendors in the world, have sued each other over patent infringements, bringing into focus a new schism in the storage industry.
HP was the one to file first, although events leading up to the countersuits have occurred over the past 12 months - despite the two companies agreeing to exchange APIs less than two months ago. The suits were brought in a district court of California.
EMC's filing listed patents covering remote mirroring technology that it said HP had usurped. For its part, HP alleged that EMC's applications infringed patents relating to its Symmetrix, Clariion and TimeFinder products, reportedly to do with techniques for data transfer, data protection and disk failover.
EMC already has an existing suit against HP for technology it gained when it acquired a company called StorageApps last year, and it also has an ongoing suit against Hitachi over six EMC patents.
The suits set down the battle lines in the storage industry. On one side is Hewlett-Packard, which dropped its ties with EMC in favour of a stronger relationship with Hitachi and its storage subsidiary, Hitachi Data Systems. On the other side is the alliance between EMC and Dell, which has become so close recently that there were even rumours that Dell would buy EMC - since scotched.
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