Networking components maker Brocade Communications (BRCD) announced yesterday that a federal court denied a request from A10 Networks to stay a new permanent injunction handed down on Jan. 23, that barred it from using four Brocade trade secrets that it was found to have stolen and incorporated into its AX series products.
Last August, a jury found that, in addition to violating Brocade's patents in four instances, A10 additionally directly copied proprietary Brocade code into its products, misappropriated four trade secrets that it then used in its AX series of products, and interfered with the contract of an engineer working at Foundry Networks, which Brocade had acquired in 2008.
The sweeping decision led the court to issue a permanent injunction against A10, and permanently enjoined them from infringing on Brocade's patents. It also confirmed all the liability findings by the jury, and issued a $60 million assessment for damages against A10 for the patent infringement. Two weeks later, the court issued the new permanent injunction for the trade secret misappropriation.
A10 sought a stay of the injunction, but the court denied the request on Tuesday, thereby putting them into effect immediately.
Brocade's vice president and general counsel Tyler Wall called the ruling "a clear and decisive victory for Brocade covering a broad range of intellectual property theft by A10."
