Granted in October, the injunction follows a US court judgment in May that EMC patents are infringed by the CASA technology, which HP gained in 2001 after a whopping $350 million stock-swap purchase of start-up StorageApps Inc.
HP said that it has already lodged an appeal against the injunction, in an attempt to restore even a chance of recovering the price it paid for StorageApps. CASA is a renamed version of what was StorageApp’s principal product, and in HP’s own words even before the injunction the device was only a relatively low-volume product.
We continue to believe that HP’s product do not infringe upon the asserted patent claim and we are currently appealing the court’s decision. That said, while the product prospects did not materialize as we had hoped, HP still believes it was worthwhile endeavor, said an HP spokesperson.
The court judgment in May concerned EMC’s patented data replication technology, and at that time EMC warned that it would be seeking an injunction. Before the injunction was granted HP said it had begun backpedaling on CASA sales, because it was unsure of any damages it would have to make with EMC. Those damages still have yet to be settled.
EMC originally launched its patent lawsuit against StorageApps before its acquisition by HP, and clearly HP judged the legal position wrongly. After the May judgment some observers speculated that EMC and HP would make a deal allowing HP to keep CASA on the market. In keeping with its hardnosed reputation, EMC proved them wrong.
Until last year StorageApps’ technology was to be merged with Compaq’s Versastor virtualization technology, resulting in a product that was to run on Brocade’s forthcoming smart SAN switch. However in December 2003 HP put that plan on ice, leaving the company as the only large storage vendor with no in-house full-blooded virtualization product, either in development or already on the market excepting its OEM’ed version of Hitachi’s Lightning TagmaStore.
HP says that suggestions it made in September that led to a Computergram report that it would be announcing fresh virtualization developments were misinterpreted. The company’s only storage virtualization plans now are related to the storage grid technology it hopes to ship in around three years’ time.
