Veeam Succeeds Against Symantec’s Infringement Challenge

Veeam Software announced that the patent infringement cases Symantec (now Veritas) brought against Veeam more than four years ago are finally over with the federal district court’s dismissal with prejudice of the consolidated legal actions. The Court and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have vindicated Veeam’s approach to delivering Availability solutions for the Always-On Enterprise, demonstrating that vendors seeking to prolong the longevity of legacy technologies cannot suppress innovation and crush the innovative approaches of disruptive providers with unsubstantiated legal claims.

Veeam has triumphed after a four-year dispute initiated by Symantec because Symantec’s legacy physical backup products could not compete with Veeam's approach to delivering Availability solutions for the Always-On Enterprise. They initiated two separate lawsuits in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, the first lawsuit filed in February 2012., with the second filed in October 2012., claiming that Veeam’s products infringed several of Symantec's data storage, restore and backup patents.  With these decisions, all of the patent claims Symantec asserted against Veeam have been found either invalid by the USPTO or dropped from the lawsuits with prejudice by Symantec.

With the recent Federal Circuit decision affirming the USPTO’s decision that the asserted claims on the last remaining Symantec patent were not patentable, its efforts to remove Veeam as a competitor effectively came to an end. In all, the USPTO found as unpatentable the asserted claims of seven Symantec Patents. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has dismissed all eight asserted patents with prejudice.