A US District Court judge has issued a preliminary injunction ordering Hewlett-Packard (HP) to immediately discontinue infringing on EMC trademarks in naming and marketing HP storage products.
Specifically, the court's order prohibits HP from using the letters "MC" in any of HP's enterprise storage products. HP enterprise storage products released in May include the letters "E" and "MC", which are likely to confuse customers about the source of the product, according to an EMC press release quoting US District Judge Joseph Tauro.
The injunction comes less than a month after both companies mutually terminated a 1995 reseller agreement under which EMC sold and supported its storage systems as part of HP's Unix server installations.
The agreement was extended as recently as January this year but was discontinued in June after HP introduced competing storage systems developed by Hitachi Data Systems.
Although the new products were officially named "HP SureStore E Disk Array MC256," HP and its executives repeatedly referred to the new products as "E MC256" or "SureStore E MC256" in an attempt to illegally capitalise on the EMC trademark, claimed EMC in a prepared statement announcing the injunction.
An HP spokeswoman says HP would comment after having had a chance to review the injunction.