EMC Sues Hitachi; Hitachi Countersues

EMC filed a lawsuit against Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Hitachi with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and in US District Court in Worcester, Massachusetts. According to EMC, HDS and Hitachi are infringing on six EMC patents. Four of the patents are related to EMC's Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) and TimeFinder software. The other two patents are related to data migration and storage of mainframe data. EMC maintains that Hitachi's Hitachi TrueCopy (formerly known as Hitachi Open Remote Copy--HORC), Hitachi Open Asynchronous Remote Copy (HOARC), and ShadowImage products violate its patents.

EMC claims it has tried to resolve the patent claims with HDS and Hitachi for the last 4 years, but hasn't been able to resolve the concerns. EMC is asking the ITC to block importation of Hitachi's infringing software, which is sold by HDS in the United States.

Initially, Hitachi released a statement that said EMC's lawsuit was without merit and it planned to vigorously defend its products. Hitachi then filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma claiming that EMC violates 8 of its software patents. Hitachi owns more than 1200 US patents in the field of data storage.

http://www.emc.com/ip

http://www.hds.com