Crossroads Updates Patent Infringement Litigation

Crossroads Systems, Inc. announced an update to its patent infringement litigation against defendants Oracle, NetApp, Cisco, Quantum, Dot Hill, and Huawei.

The companyY is seeking monetary damages for infringement of U.S. Patents (title: Storage router and method for providing virtual local storage) 6,425,035, 7,051,147, 7,934,041, and 7,987,311.

The Federal Court in the Western District of Texas entered an order in which the Court determined the meaning of 17 disputed claim terms in the patents-in-suit. The order was consistent with the Special Master’s recommendation issued on February 23, 2015 and overruled the defendants’ objections on almost all disputed claims terms. The Markman order also closely parallels the claim constructions in previous litigation. A Markman order is significant to a patent case because it provides clarity to a number of patent infringement and validity arguments and must be followed by a jury in deliberations.

This was the fourth time the Court has reviewed the meaning of the patent claims relating to company’ ‘972 patent portfolio. Various patents in company’ ‘972 access controls patent portfolio have been licensed to 51 companies over 14 years. Crossroads has received over $61 million in license fees and awards over that period.

In conjunction with the Markman Order, the Court granted a motion to stay the cases until the Patent Trial and Appeal Board issues a final decision in the instituted inter partes reviews. The first decision is expected in January 2016.

“This is an extremely important and positive step in our litigation,” said Richard K. Coleman, Jr., president and CEO, Crossroads. “The judge’s Markman ruling confirms our belief that the defendants are infringing our intellectual property and strengthens our resolve to recover the hundreds of millions of dollars we believe could be due our shareholders.“