Fish Helps SRI Win Longstanding Patent Battle

On September 19th a Delaware federal district court jury found that SRI International’s patent # 6,711,615 and patent # 6,484, 203 for enterprise network intrusion detection technology were valid. Further, the jury found that Symantec Inc. and Internet Security Systems, Inc. infringed those patents in certain network security products. Fish & Richardson represented SRI.

SRI International invented a practical and effective enterprise-wide intrusion detection system that solved the fundamental problems of dealing with computer security in large, dispersed and high-traffic networks. The SRI technology covers both software and hardware form factors. These inventions were secured by the # 615 and # 203 patents.

The jury found that Symantec infringed the ‘615 and ‘203 patents in their Manhunt series of products (iForce IDS, ManHunt 3.0, Symantec Network Security 4.0 and Symantec Network Security 7100) as well as the Symantec Gateway Security products in combination with Incident Manager 3.0/Security Information Manager 9500 series products. The jury also found that ISS infringed the ‘615 and ‘203 patents in their RealSecure Network, Guard, Server and Desktop series and Proventia A, G, M, Server and Desktop series sensor products, in combination with Security Fusion 2.0.

The case was originally dismissed on a summary judgment of invalidity. That ruling was successfully appealed by Fish & Richardson to the Federal Circuit, which vacated the summary judgment ruling and remanded the case for trial. Fish & Richardson attorneys from Silicon Valley tried the case over a two week period. Symantec and ISS were represented by Day, Casebeer and King & Spaulding respectively.

Network intrusion detection is a vital technology to a vast number of enterprises, including companies in Silicon Valley and around the globe. Sales of the infringing products amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.