Sun has made true on its chief executive's promise and today filed a lawsuit against storage vendor NetApp for infringing on 12 of its patents. The case is a retaliation for a legal complaint that NetApp filed against Sun in September.

In his colorful, Wednesday blog posting, Schwartz declared an all-out war against NetApp. Sun will demand that NetApp ceases sales of many of its products and demands monetary damages.

More importantly, Schwartz succeeds at positioning his company as the undisputed "good guy" by promising to donate half the proceeds to the free software movement. Secondly, the case revolves around ZFS, technology that Sun developed and then released under an open source license. NetApp isn't just suing Sun, but threatens mankind.

26 Oct 2007

Sun's strategy is working. The company already has Groklaw on its side, which kept the world privy of all details small and large of the SCO case. Growlaw has already called upon the public to hunt for prior art against NetApp patents.

This juicy patent conflict started 5 years ago, when NetApp approached StorageTek with the request to purchase a patent of them. StorageTek declined, but realised that NetApp probably was violating the patent and started licensing negotiations. Sun acquired NetApp in 2005, when the licensing talks were still going on.

Sun at one point asked $37m as part of a patent cross licensing deal. Talks broke down and last September NetApp sued Sun for alleged patent infringement.

NetApp always has claimed that it is not the aggressor in this case. Sun demanded royalty payments, which NetApp took as a legal threat that warranted a pre-emptive strike. It now also argues that the Sun patents are bad and should be retracted.

NetApp clearly lacks credibility. It fired the first shot by filing its lawsuit. It coveted a patent that it now claims to be invalid. And you can never win by suing open source.

In antoher patent war, pro-patent lobbyists hired a yacht in July 2005 to call upon the European Parliament to vote for software patents. The initiative was met by canoes holding up a sign that reads: "software patents kill innovation". The image perfectly depicts that parties in the patent debate: big money vs the common man. The patent directive was turned down with near unanimous votes btw.