Yesterday, 3Com Corp. (Nasdaq: COMS) introduced the first product to be sold in the United States as part of its OEM agreement with Chinese manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (see 3Com's First Huawei Gear Hits the US).

The two companies announced a joint venture in March, in which they agreed to develop products for the enterprise switching and routing market, but until new products are ready, 3Com will be reselling existing Huawei products (see 3Com Taps Huawei in Enterprise Battle). Yesterday at the CeBit trade show in New York, 3Com announced the Switch 7700, a Huawei product being sold under the 3Com label. Huawei has already been shipping the Layer 3 core LAN switch for the past several months outside the U.S., says Nick Hallwood, director of enterprise business for 3Com.

Mark Michael, general counsel for 3Com, says that the 7700 switch will not be affected by a preliminary injunction handed down last week from a District Court in Texas, where Huawei has been defending itself against a patent and copyright infringement lawsuit Cisco filed against it in January (see Cisco/Huawei Brawl Begins). Last week, a Texas judge partially granted Cisco’s request for a preliminary injunction that would prevent Huawei from selling certain of its products in the United States (see Cisco Wins Huawei Injunction).

Michael says the 7700 is not part of the product group that Cisco alleges is infringing on its patents. He says that those products were actually removed from the market before Cisco even filed its lawsuit (see Huawei: Cisco Code Is Gone).

3Com’s product announcement further explains the timing of another court filing from last week. After the limited preliminary injunction was ordered, 3Com filed a motion for the court to intervene in the litigation, asking the court to clear the way for it to deliver products through its 3Com-Huawei joint venture (see Huawei: Cisco Code Is Gone).

— Marguerite Reardon, Senior Editor, Light Reading