Quantum Sues Riverbed

By Greg McNevin

October 11, 2007: Continuing its de-duplication patent dispute, Quantum has launched legal action against Riverbed claiming that the company has infringed and continues to infringe the method, patented by Quantum in 1999.

Quantum alleges that Riverbed’s products include the de-duplication intellectual property it locked down in its ‘810 patent. The technology is rapidly rising in prominence as it eliminates redundant data for storage on disk and transmission via networks, fundamentally changing the storage and networking landscape.

It dramatically increases effective disk capacity over that of conventional disk, enabling users to retain data on fast recovery disk for months instead of days. It also significantly reduces the bandwidth needed to transmit such data between sites as only the sections of data that have changed are transmitted.

Quantum claims it has spent eight months attempting to resolve the issue with Riverbed directly. "Unfortunately, this effort has been unsuccessful, and we felt we had no choice but to initiate legal action to protect our intellectual property in data de-duplication," says Shawn Hall, vice president and general counsel of Quantum.

As they technology is becoming so important to modern day backup and transmission of critical data, the case will no doubt be followed very closely by many in the industry.

Comment on this story