Brocade Awarded $112 Million Vs. A10 Networks and CEO Lee Chen

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. announced that a San Jose, CA federal court jury returned its verdict this afternoon in the case of Brocade vs. A10 Networks, Inc., and found A10 responsible for broad-based intellectual property infringement and unfair competition, awarding approximately $112 million to Brocade.

The trial lasted three weeks.

The jury unanimously awarded punitive damages against A10 and also personally against its CEO Lee Chen, strongly condemning Chen and A10’s unfair competition. The jury also returned an unambiguous verdict for patent and copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation covering A10’s entire AX Series load balancing server products.

The jury found for Brocade on:

• Three claims of patent infringement involving technologies for Global Server Load Balancing and High Availability. The jury found that the A10 AX Series line of load balancers infringe on these specific patents.
• Misappropriation of four trade secrets involving techniques used in the Brocade ServerIron products that A10 applied for use in its AX series.
• Direct copying of proprietary Brocade code used in Brocade’s ServerIron products for use in A10 products.
• Unfair competition based on interference with the contract of an engineer while he was employed at Foundry Networks (which Brocade acquired in late 2008). A10’s CEO Lee Chen directly recruited the engineer to work at both places at the same time in breach of his contract with Foundry.

"Brocade is grateful for the jury’s service and close attention to the evidence. Brocade stands firm in its commitment to protect its intellectual property assets and our innovation," said Tyler Wall, general counsel at Brocade. "While litigation is a last resort, in this case the jury plainly felt that it was warranted. We are pleased that jury agreed with us on our arguments and for handing us this major victory in court."