Court Lets 3Com In Cisco-Huawei Suit

In June, 3Com asked the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas, to declare that the products it sources from Huawei and later sells through a planned joint venture do not infringe on Cisco's intellectual property. At that time, Huawei also asked the court to declare that its new products do not infringe upon Cisco's Intellectual property.

3Com said the intervention demonstrates that it is confident that the new products it will ship are substantially different from those entangled in the dispute between Cisco and Huawei.

In March, 3Com said that it would team with Huawei to produce the high-end networking gear it needs to move into the large enterprise market, despite the fact that the Chinese networking vendor is embroiled in a patent and copyright-infringement lawsuit with Cisco.

On June 18, 3Com introduced the Switch 7700, the first product from its partnership with Huawei. The 7700, slated to ship by the end of this month, is a Layer 3 modular LAN switch for campus core applications.

The court on June 6 issued a preliminary injunction that bars Huawei from selling products that use Cisco documentation, online help files and source code. Huawei said it already has pulled the products in question from U.S. markets.

3Com said it filed the motion to intervene in preparation for the launch of its 3Com-Huawei joint venture. It plans in the interim to begin shipping products from Huawei on an OEM basis until the joint venture is operational.