Protecting Innovation: Arista’s Copying of Cisco’s User Interfaces

I can not pretend not to be disappointed that a jury in a federal court after finding Arista has copied the Cisco user interfaces and the copy is not justified by fair use doctrine, applied the main unknown scenes that can be done to deny Cisco relieves Arista action. In layman's terms, justification by applying the scenes to the effect that the jury was excused copy Arista because they believe that "external factors" dictated the selection and arrangement of some of the falsified characteristics.

We believe that this narrow doctrine developed to insure that copyright infringement does not extend to the use of mundane elements of literary works as diagram device a character or a frame has been misapplied or misunderstood.

We were convinced that a third court (after two separate findings of the judges of the International Trade Commission) came to the conclusion Arista had deliberately copied Cisco, refute Arista accusations in which his products had been developed from a sheet Of clean paper. We will look at Judge Freeman to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to justify the jury's conclusion, as well as other grounds for cancellation of the test result.

Arista copied even though other competitors have developed user interfaces in a variety of ways that they do not copy. Cisco's user interface is well known and successful, and although it has often been called the "industry standard" - meaning a popular reference - no Cisco technology in this case is incorporated into a real industry standard; In fact, there is no standardization body for CLI.

Our goal has always been to protect technological innovation and prevent Arista from using our patented and proprietary technology. In two separate cases before ITC, we have made significant progress in this direction. We are delighted that the ICC made a final infringement determination against Arista on three Cisco patents in the case known as 944, and one judge in the ITC found a violation of two additional patents in the case '945.

In some ways it is ironic that The San Jose jury has heard nothing from Arista demonstrating their desire to respect the intellectual property rights of others but has not had the opportunity to hear replicas of these intellectual property rights claims based on Arista's own proven actions.

Cisco believes in competition and employee fair mobility, especially since both are essential elements of the innovation needed in our industry. And we also believe in protecting the hard work of our employees and made important investments to develop great products.

This, too, is critical to our industry. It encourages inventors to create a new technology that meets future needs. Investors are encouraged to have confidence in our company and its future. Cisco will continue its position of not being a litigious society. We prefer to invest in our people and our products. But we will defend both in blatant copy situations, as we have seen in our business against Arista.