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Tape vendor sueball match over: SpectraLogic and Overland down rackets

US Patent Office referee calls time

Tape Library vendor SpectraLogic has announced that it has beaten off a patent lawsuit from Overland Storage.

Overland had claimed Spectra was infringing its IP. Instead the US Patent Office has ruled the IP had been present in an earlier IBM tape library.

The firm said the patent in question is U.S. Patent No. 6,328,766, which applies to storage library partitioning. On 7 November, 2014, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in the US Patent Office determined that all of Overland's claims were negated by the so-called prior art in an IBM 3494 enterprise tape library manual.

According to Spectra, the history runs like this:

  • Overland filed a patent infringement lawsuit against BDT, IBM and Dell in 2010 and then filed an ITC (International Trade Commission) action immediately afterwards in an effort to prevent them from importing products allegedly covered by the ’766 patent.
  • Dell and IBM subsequently settled with Overland.
  • The ITC decided in May 2013 Overland's claims of the ’766 patent were invalid based on prior art in the IBM 3494 library.
  • Overland gave up on the ITC action, but two of Overland's patents, which the case had brought into question, were upheld. So it carried on with its patent infringement lawsuit against BDT, while also filing new patent infringement lawsuits against Quantum, Venture Corp, Spectra Logic, PivotStor, Qualstar, Tandberg Data GmbH and Tandberg Data Corp in July 2012. (Overland has since bought Tandberg, so those cases lapsed.)
  • Spectra then countersued, citing four other patents.
  • Overland ended its legal action against BDT in July 2014.
  • It also agreed to dismiss with prejudice its case against PivotStor.
  • The Patent Office's final decision came on 7 Nov and freed both Spectra and Overland of any continued litigation on the matter. According to court documents, Spectra will not be able to file any counterclaims.

We've asked Overland about the status of the Qualstar, Quantum and Venture Corp cases and will pass on the results of that when we find out. ®

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