NetApp aims to stop Sun's ZFS open sauce

Oh dear, it is such a pity. Two eminently respected storage companies have fallen out and one is taking the other to court.

Unlike the SCO-vs-IBM and SCO-vs-Novell case this isn't an example of a fading company trying to save its business though legal moves. Nor is it a case of a bullied company snapping back. No, this is a regrettable case, one that shouldn't be coming to court at all but is, and it's all because of patent breach-chasing lawyers.

Like ambulance chasers, the patent breach lawyers will win in a fees-sense whatever the outcome of the cases they instigate.

How has it come to this, to NetApp taking Sun to court?

Background

Towards the end of 2004, StorageTek lawyers said NetApp had infringed three StorageTek patents concerning disk virtualisation and requested royalty payments from it, in the millions of dollars area. NetApp looked into this and said two things: no, it hadn't infringed the alleged patents; and the patents weren't valid anyway.

When Sun bought StorageTek in Autumn, 2005, it took over these discussions and resumed the claims against NetApp in January, 2006. The discussions got nowhere with neither side abandoning claims throughout 2006 and 2007 to the present time.

Over this period, and prompted by the StorageTek and then Sun's patent-breach chasing lawyers, NetApp began examining Sun's own software products for use of NetApp patented technology. Lo and behold; it found seven examples concerning WAFL, its Write Anywhere File Layout, in Sun's ZFS (Zettabyte File System).

Concerning one example, the claim states: "The architects of ZFS have described it as follows: The best way to avoid file system corruption due to system panic or power loss is to keep the data on the disk self-consistent at all times, as WAFL does. To do so, the file system needs a simple way to transition from one consistent on-disk state to another without any window of time when the system could crash and leave the on-disk data in an inconsistent state."

It suggests that: "As an exercise, one might compare the ZFS "uberblock" and its role in file system consistency as describe ... with the role of the "root node" and "file information structure" described in (NetApp's WAFL patent)."

As if that was not enough, the stakes are raised higher by Sun distributing an open source version of ZFS, in effect, giving away NetApp code for free. NetApp has disowned any interest in stopping individuals using the code privately or its use in research, but commercial businesses may be using the code in products and or services for revenue purposes and that could be stopped if NetApp's suit is granted by the court.

So NetApp informed Sun of the alleged infringements and requested it stop infringing NetApp patents. Sun effectively demurred, but didn't withdraw its original allegations, and time passed - and passed - and NetApp decided to bring things to a head.

Why didn't Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz and NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven sit down and talk this though, with Dave Hitz, the writer of the patented NetApp code at issue, present?

The two company's linen may be clean but washing it in public court will make it, and them, look grubby.