VMware Will Fight $236M Densify Patent Infringement Decision

VMware plans to fight a $236 million virtualization patent infringement judgment against the company won by Densify.

Densify won its lawsuit on January 24 following a nine-day jury trial before Judge Leonard Stark in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.

Densify, formerly known as Cirba, won damages for infringement of two patents covering virtualization technology that allows multiple computer systems to run on a single server. The decision covers VMware's vSphere with DRS, a distributed resource scheduler for virtual machines; vROPs with DRS, for scheduling virtual machines between clusters; and VMWare Cloud on AWS with DRS 2.0, for running and scheduling VMware VMs on Amazon Web Services.

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"As we maintained throughout trial, VMware unlawfully used Densify's intellectual property for its own gain," said Courtland Reichman, lead counsel for Densify, said in a statement. "We are very pleased with the jury's verdict and consider it not only a victory for Densify, but a victory for all technology companies who risk being unfairly squeezed out of the market by larger competitors who infringe their valuable inventions."

But it's not over for VMware. "While we appreciate and respect the judicial process, we continue to strongly believe that we do not infringe the patents asserted against us in this case, and intend to vigorously pursue all legal remedies that are available to us to prove that we are not liable here," a spokesman said in an email statement.

"Unfortunately, VMware, a great company, made a bad mistake, and used Densify's intellectual property," Densify CEO Gerry Smith said in an April statement when announcing the lawsuit. "Like any small, successful technology company, the only way we can effectively compete with larger companies is by having a fair and level playing field where intellectual property rights are respected. We filed this lawsuit to defend the innovations and intellectual property Densify brings to market."

For telcos and other service providers, virtualization is important in providing the infrastructure for network functions virtualization (NFV).

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— Mitch Wagner Executive Editor, Light Reading