Earlier today, the International Trade Commission (ITC) issued a ruling in the first of their investigations into Arista.
This follows a lengthy investigation, a review of thousands of pages of briefing materials and supporting evidence, and a two-week hearing involving testimony and cross-examination. We thank Judge Shaw and the ITC staff for their diligence.
Specifically the Judge's ruling:
The details of the Judge's determination will be published within 30 days, but this notice marks the beginning of the end for Arista's systemic copying of our intellectual property.
Arista can no longer support claims to customers, resellers, and the market that they created products from "a clean sheet of paper." The patents in question go to the core of Arista's products. One of those found to infringe covers Cisco's proprietary "SysDB." Arista's CEO has previously referred to "SysDB" as Arista's "secret sauce" and more recently, the architecture on which NetDB is built. None of the patents have been proposed for or adopted as industry standards. And all patents we asserted against Arista were invented either by Cisco employees who became Arista executives, or by Engineers who worked for Arista executives when employed at Cisco.
We seek fair competition, but will take action against those who misappropriate our technology and use it to compete against us. Based on our investigation, we believe that Arista's use of our IP was intentional, pervasive, and driven by the most senior levels of their organization to unfairly compete. Copying and misappropriation are not a legitimate strategy, and today's ruling is a vindication of our position.
We now see four options for Arista:
And this is just the beginning. In April we will see a ruling in the second ITC investigation, which may confirm more violations and import bans. Arista will also face two District Court juries with these rulings on their record. The judges and juries in those trials will note this day as the day that Arista no longer can pretend that its products aren't tainted by misconduct. This will be important as they consider injunctions to remove infringing Arista product from the market.
Cisco's goal has always been to protect our innovation, and stop Arista from using our patented technology. Their behavior has negative consequences for the industry, and is unfair to those who were sold infringing products and those competitors -beyond Cisco -who are working hard to play by the rules. We see today's ruling is an important step towards accountability.