Hewlett-Packard Co was dealt a decisive setback yesterday in its legal skirmish with EMC Corp over product names when a federal judge made a preliminary injunction against the company permanent. Thursday’s ruling bars HP from using the letters EMC in the names of its storage products, which the court found to be in violation of EMC’s registered trademarks.
The trouble all began last May when HP dumped EMC as an OEM partner in favor of competing technology from Hitachi Data Systems Ltd. It marketed the HDS system as the SureStore E Disk Array MC256 and referred to its as the E MC256. EMC took the matter to court, claiming that HP wouldn’t settle the matter amicably. On July 8, a preliminary injunction was issued and HP changed the name of the product to the XP256.
