Trend’s original suit, filed in January 2008, centres on Barracuda’s distribution of anti-virus software ClamAV. Barracuda says the product is a free and open source, GNU general public license toolkit, which can be used on email gateways to scan emails for viruses. Trend Micro says that the use of the product infringes on U.S. Patent No. 5,623,600, known as ‘600 patent, regarding filtering viruses on an Internet gateway.
Barracuda has launched a counterclaim suit, alleging that Trend Micro has violated U.S. Patent Nos. 7,093,287, 7,093,294, and 7,103,913. The patents were developed at Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York and purchased from IBM. According to Barracuda, they detail methodologies for virus protection, spam and web filtering, and intrusion detection.
Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks, said: The reality is that Trend Micro is asking Barracuda Networks to pay for the use of the free and open source ClamAV software. We have asserted all along that Trend Micro’s actions are unjust and could have serious implications against the open source community and other free and open source projects.
