Threatens Coraid with legal action
This week NetApp turned up the heat on its patent infringement case for ZFS by ordering Coraid to stop reselling its recently-launched ZFS-based storage appliance.
NetApp claims that the Sun-developed ZFS infringes on several of its patents and they have been embroiled with Oracle (who acquired Sun) in settlement over lawsuits both companies filed in 2007. Oracle continues to offer ZFS to its clients.
The latest news is that NetApp issued a letter from its attorneys to Coraid, the maker of the EtherDrive Z-Series NAS appliance. Coraid in accordance with the demands of the letter pulled its Z-Series NAS appliance from distribution.
That leaves several vendors who are larger than Coraid for NetApp to bully with patent infringement claims. Among them are Nexenta, Compellent and GreenPlum (now EMC). The list also includes GreenBytes which scrapped with Sun several years ago over NFS. No one knows whether Nexenta or Compellent have received similar threats from NetApp and the vendors are not saying.
Coraid is a partner of Nexenta, who also markets an ATA over Ethernet technology product.
To complicate matters further, ZFS is open source.
But to put any resolution to the matter, Coraid CEO Kevin Brown has pulled the appliance from distribution until NetApp and Oracle settle their suits and countersuits.
