Riverbed: Case Against Silver Peak In California To Proceed, Stay Lifted

(RTTNews) - Riverbed Technology (RVBD), an application performance infrastructure firm, announced late Friday that the stay in its patent infringement case against Silver Peak in the US District Court for the Northern District of California has been lifted following a failed re-examination effort by Silver Peak.

A trial date for the court to hear Riverbed's claims against Silver Peak has not yet been set.

Riverbed said it looks forward to prosecuting its infringement case against Silver Peak.

In addition, the US District Court for the District of Delaware, in response to post-trial motions on the litigation before that court, affirmed the jury's findings from April but ruled against Silver Peak's motion for a permanent injunction.

"While we are pleased with the Court's decision to deny Silver Peak's request for an injunction, we respectfully disagree with the Court's decision not to overturn the jury's findings and we expect to prevail on appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit," the company said in its statement.

Riverbed added tha, although the portion of the verdict that was upheld addresses only minor optional features in RiOS software, and although it expects to prevail on appeal, it has elected to design non-infringing alternatives to these features.

As a result, even if an injunction had been issued, there would be no impact to Riverbed's ability to continue to manufacture, sell and maintain its SteelHead products.

Meanwhile, Silver Peak earlier announced that a federal judge has upheld a jury's verdict in favor of Silver Peak Systems, Inc. against Riverbed. A jury in Delaware federal court found in April that Riverbed infringes Silver Peak's certain U.S. Patents.

Addressing post-trial motions, the United States District Court Judge denied all of Riverbed's challenges to the jury's verdict. He found that Silver Peak had presented sufficient evidence to show that Riverbed's RiOS and Steelhead devices are infringing the Silver Peak patents.

While Silver Peak's motion for permanent injunction based on the jury's verdict was not granted, the court noted that the evidence necessary to show irreparable harm caused by Riverbed's infringement was not available, likely because damages discovery has not yet occurred. Such evidence is required to obtain a permanent injunction. The court indicated that Silver Peak may renew its motion after further discovery.