Cisco says Arista can't bring products into the US, as a result of ongoing intellectual property litigation by Cisco against Arista.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

August 23, 2016

3 Min Read
Arista Banned From Importing Products – Cisco

The US Trade Representative has upheld a ban on importing Arista products, effective Tuesday, according to a report on Cisco's blog. The ban is a result of ongoing intellectual property litigation brought by Cisco against Arista.

The trade representative upheld an International Trade Commission ban on importing all Arista Networks Inc. products, writes Mark Chandler, Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) senior vice president and general counsel, in a post on the Cisco blog Monday.

"This is a great victory for the principle that the intentional use of others' intellectual property should not be allowed," Chandler says.

The order "blocks the marketing, sale or distribution of all inventory of imported infringing products. It also means that Arista is unable to honor the service and warranty contracts for any infringing products sold after the ITC's ruling date (June 23, 2016). Arista's customers must now bear that risk," Chandler says.

Cisco's blog post paints a bleak picture for Arista, which imports its products from overseas. Its primary contract manufacturers are Jabil Circuit and Foxconn, though it also works with Flextronics International on logistics and final configuration in North America, according to Arista's most recent 10-K filing with the SEC. Without the ability to import products, Arista is left with the inventory of its US warehouses -- after that, it will have nothing to sell unless it can overturn or work around the import ban. However, Arista said in its most recent earnings call that it is bringing US manufacturing online. 

Arista responded Tuesday in an email statement from its general counsel: "We believe that we are in full compliance with the [International Trade Commission's] remedial orders. As we've previously announced, all of our products now feature our new version of EOS, which contains design-arounds that we believe address the ITC's findings. Our primary focus remains the continued supply of non-infringing products to our customers."

Arista said in June -- and reiterated on its most recent earnings call, earlier this month -- that it's ready with "design-arounds" to address the ITC's findings, following the commission's final determination that Arista violated three Cisco patents in Arista's Ethernet switches. (See Arista Ready With 'Design-Arounds' Following Import Ban Recommendation and Cloud Drives Arista to Billion-Dollar Run Rate.)

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Arista said it had a new version of the EOS software that it believes is non-infringing. But Cisco said Monday that Arista had not yet received regulatory approvals for that software.

Tuesday morning, Arista announced new telemetry capabilities for realtime network monitoring in EOS. (See Arista Launches Real-Time Telemetry for Cloud Networks.)

Cisco filed its initial complaint against Arista in December, 2014.

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— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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