December 06, 2006 10:57 ET

BlueArc Successfully Defends Intellectual Property, Winning Network Appliance Lawsuit

Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Rules in Favor of BlueArc Defense

SAN JOSE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- December 6, 2006 -- BlueArc® Corporation, the world leader in network storage innovation, today announced that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed the lower court's decision to dismiss the patent infringement lawsuit filed against the company by Network Appliance.

This litigation began in August 2003, when Network Appliance filed a case against BlueArc in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit derived from Network Appliance's July 2003 acquisition of Auspex Corporation's patent portfolio, following the company's bankruptcy.

"We are pleased that the courts have confirmed what our customers and partners know, defending our significant intellectual property and recognizing our key technology differentiation," said Mike Gustafson, president and CEO of BlueArc. "Despite these legal attacks by a key competitor, BlueArc has continued to achieve impressive customer, revenue and market share growth in the past three years and our Titan 2000 network storage system continues to deliver real-world benefits far beyond anything else on the market."

BlueArc's Titan 2000 network storage systems feature a unique, modular, hardware architecture, based on programmable logic devices and distributed memory, enabling massive parallelization and separation of function. Breaking away from the decades-old Von Neumann architecture found in the overwhelming majority of traditional CPU-based filers was necessary to eliminate inherent bottlenecks in the CPU, memory, PCI bus, and software stacks. BlueArc Titan systems are designed to support wire-speed access to shared network storage resources accelerating applications or enabling massive file server consolidation. More than 200 customers in a wide variety of industries worldwide are able to achieve tasks previously unattainable from alternative vendors.

The suit focused on three patents initially held by Auspex, including U.S. Patent numbers 5,802,366 and 5,931,918, relating to a "Parallel I/O network file server architecture," and U.S. Patent 6,065,037, for a "multiple software-facility component operating system for co-operative processor control within a multiprocessor computer system." BlueArc's unique hardware architecture was found not to have infringed any valid claim of the asserted patents.

In May of 2005, BlueArc successfully defended its position at the district court level, successfully disposing of all asserted claims of all three patents asserted against the company. This win led to Network Appliance's subsequent appeal to the higher court, which affirmed the district court's finding that BlueArc is not liable for infringement of any valid claim.

About BlueArc

BlueArc is the world leader in network storage innovation. BlueArc's Titan storage system family delivers unparalleled performance, scalability and simplicity, enabling customers to accelerate their digital world. Utilizing a unique patented architecture, Titan customers can achieve tasks impossible with alternative systems, implementing tomorrow's solutions today. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, California with European operations based in Bracknell, England. More information on BlueArc is available on the Internet at www.bluearc.com.