US court approves 3Com and Huawei

All systems are go for a joint venture between networking firms 3Com and Huawei after a US court granted 3Com's motion to intervene in the litigation between Cisco and Huawei.

3Com entered the legal battle over intellectual property rights last month, when it asked a court to declare that it had not infringed intellectual property.

The decision by the court granted the motion and "moves 3Com and its strategic partner Huawei forward in selling products that are acceptable from an intellectual property perspective and separate from the dispute between 3Com and Huawei," said Mark Michael, senior vice president and general counsel at 3Com, in a statement.

Stanimira Koleva, channel director of international regions at 3Com, said the court's decision would alleviate some customer fears as the vendor prepared its channel in the UK.

"We have introduced our certification programme in the last month, which sets the requirements for resellers wanting to sell the 3Com/Huawei local area network core and enterprise wide area network routers.

"We will be looking to certify between seven and 10 resellers in the UK," she said.

All the company's UK distributors will be able to stock the new products, as certifications will not be applied to them.

Kevin Vine, director of networking services at 3Com distributor Ingram Micro, said there was a "lot of interest in the products because of all the hype in the press regarding the Cisco and Huawei dispute".

3Com is acting wisely in keeping certification "stringent" and the number of resellers low to begin with, he added. "The proof of the pudding will be when the resellers touch the products."

If the products are successful 3Com will have to increase the number of certified resellers if it wants distributors to be interested, Vine said.

Separately, Koleva is leaving her EMEA channel responsibilities to run 3Com's South Asia business at the end of this month.

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