Open Source Blog

Trend fired the first shot in January this year, when it filed a suit claiming that Barracuda’s distribution of anti-virus software ClamAV infringes on U.S. Patent No. 5,623,600, known as ‘600 patent, regarding filtering viruses on an Internet gateway.

In early July, Barracuda launched a counterclaim suit, alleging that Trend violated U.S. Patent Nos. 7,093,287, 7,093,294, and 7,103,913, three patents Barracuda had acquired from IBM.

For legal reasons Genes said he was unable to talk about the most recent lawsuit in great detail, but he did speak to CBR about the original suit, and the perception that Trend is anti open source.

Genes responded to claims that the lawsuit was launched because Trend sees the open source ClamAV as a threat to its business. “This is not about the Clam AV product, it’s about the technology behind it,” Genes said. “We were granted a patent surrounding the scanning of emails for viruses at the gateway a long time ago. It’s our right to defend our Intellectual Property.”

Genes said the disagreement is not about Trend Micro’s attitude towards open source software. “What we are surprised about is the fact that this has been labelled as a dispute about open source. This is simply a dispute between two companies; it’s not about open source,” he said.

Genes did say that the most recent development was not a huge surprise to Trend Micro. He said: “We were expecting this response from Barracuda, as it is quite common in US patent disputes for counterclaims to be launched.”

In 2005, Trend Micro won a case against security appliance vendor Fortinet over server-based antivirus technology.