Brocade seeks to stop sales of A10 Networks' application switch

Brocade wants to stop sales of a competitor's application controllers it claims infringe on its intellectual property.

Brocade this week filed a motion in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., requesting the court bar A10 Networks from selling any products containing software code "stolen" from Brocade. A10 is a privately held company founded in 2004 and headquartered in San Jose.

Brocade says the motion presents evidence that A10's AX series application delivery controllers contain verbatim copies of portions of Brocade's proprietary code. Brocade and A10 are already wrangling in court over copyright theft, trade secret misappropriation and patent infringement, and the motion seeks to stop AX production, sales and importing leading up to that trial.

MORE ON A10 PRODUCT: A10's AX 5200 40Gbps application controller

Included in the copyright theft charge are A10 CEO Lee Chen, CTO Raj Jalan and other defendants. Brocade says A10 founder Chen created his company and its products using proprietary knowledge from Foundry Networks, which Chen co-founded and Brocade acquired in 2008.

Application controller leader F5 is also suing A10.

Calls to A10 headquarters and the company's legal counsel seeking comment on the Brocade motion were not returned by press time. A10 has said previously that both the Brocade and F5 suits lack merit.

The Layer 4-7 server load balancer market was $313 million in the first quarter, down 8% from the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Dell'Oro Group. Brocade's ServerIron switches, from the Foundry acquisition, and F5's BigIP and VIPRION systems compete with A10's AX series in this market.

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