Cisco’s Victory Confirmed In Egenera Patent Dispute Over Virtual Server Technology

Cisco’s Victory Confirmed In Egenera Patent Dispute Over Virtual Server Technology

The said patent relates to virtual server deployment technology, particularly allowing configuration of processing resources through software commands without the necessity of physical rewiring.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on July 7 upheld a judgement of non-infringement in favor of Cisco Systems, Inc. in a patent infringement suit brought by Egenera, Inc. The Massachusetts district court’s grant of summary judgement on two claims and a jury verdict on two others was upheld by the court, determining that Egenera failed to prove that Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) had infringed US patent number 7231430. The said patent relates to virtual server deployment technology, particularly allowing configuration of processing resources through software commands without the necessity of physical rewiring. The aim of the patented technology is to make simpler the management of data centers by using software-defined groups of servers interconnected by virtual network interfaces.

A suit was filed against Cisco by Egenera affirming infringement of claims 1, 3, 5 and 7 of the patent. Egenera alleged that Cisco’s sophisticated computing system employing virtual NICs (vNICs) to create software-defined server groups, violated these claims by integrating crucial aspects of the patented virtual server deployment technology. To begin with, the district court held a claim construction hearing, concentrating on interpretation of key terms in the patent, particularly the phrase ‘computer processor’. The term specifically referred to a central processing unit (CPU), the court determined. Based on this interpretation, Egenera then proceeded with its infringement claims. Subsequently, the district court granted Cisco’s motion for summary judgement of non-infringement relating to claims 1 and 5. Contrary to Egenera’s arguments, Cisco’s UCS executed Ethernet emulation in separate network interface components and not within the CPUs, it was determined. While claims 3 and 7 advanced to a jury trial but after going through all the evidence presented, the jury reverted with a judgement of non-infringement on the part of Cisco.