Cisco sues Arista Networks for patent infringement

Summary:Cisco said that rival Arista Networks has been copying its patents used in its current products as a strategy not an accident.
Cisco on Friday said it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against rival Arista, which specializes in software defined networking and had revenue of $410 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30.
In a blog post, Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler outlined the lawsuit, which alleges that Arista has repeatedly lifted the company's inventions and patents. Cisco said its intellectual property in part led to the Arista IPO in June.
Cisco's lawsuit revolves around 12 features that are covered by 14 patents. All of the patents are embedded into current products. Chandler also said that the Cisco patents were awarded to people who used to work at the company and are now execs at Arista.
The breakdown of patents are the following:
System Database ("SysDB") (Arista uses Cisco's networking device implementation covered by Cisco Patent No. 7,162,537)Zero-Touch Provisioning ("ZTP") (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent No. 7,290,164)On Board Failure Logging ("OBFL") (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent No.7,340,597)Control Plane Policing ("CoPP") (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent No. 7,224,668)Spanning Tree Loop Guard(Arista uses Cisco's implementations covered by Cisco Patent Nos. 7,460,492 & 7,061,875 )In-Service System Upgrades ("ISSU") (Arista uses Cisco's implementation described by Cisco Patent No. 8,356,296)Virtual Port Channels ("vPC") (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent No 8,051,211 )Access Control Lists Improvements ("ACL") (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent Nos. 7,023,853 & 6,377,577)Private Virtual Local Area Networks ("Private VLANs") (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent Nos. 6,741,592 & 7,200,145)Generic Command Interface (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent No. 7,047,526)CLI Command Data Translation (Arista uses Cisco's implementation covered by Cisco Patent No. 7,953,886)
Cisco also alleges that Arista also lifted code. Chandler said:

Arista has copied more than 500 Cisco multi-word command expressions, while networking products from HP, Brocade, Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks and Extreme each have only a small fraction of overlapping CLI commands. In the case of Juniper Junos, the overlap is less than 30 multi-word commands. These formidable competitors have innovated on their own, rather than copy, to create value and interoperability for their customers.

Topics: Networking, Data Centers
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CN... Full Bio
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Social networks face fines for failing to remove bullying content

Social networks that fail to remove content that the Australian government's new cybersafety tsar deems to be bullying of an Australian child will face fines of AU$17,000 per day for not complying under legislation introduced into parliament on Wednesday.

The Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014, introduced into the House of Representatives by Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister for Communications Paul Fletcher, sets up the new eSafety Commissioner role within the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The commissioner is designed to be a one-stop-shop for Australian children, or their guardians, to lodge complaints about bullying content online. The commissioner will be empowered to investigate and seek to have the content removed if it is deemed to be bullying to a specific Australian child.

The scheme will be broken up into two tiers, with the first tier having a voluntary rapid content removal process for large social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, that already have content removal schemes in place as declared by the commissioner.

If the tier 1 social network fails to comply with requests over a 12-month period, then the commissioner may revoke its status down to tier 2.

Tier 2 social networks that fail to comply with legally binding notices to remove content face civil penalties of AU$17,000 per day.

The person who posted the content themselves will also receive a notice and be required to remove the content, apologise, and refrain from posting bullying content in future. An injunction can also be sought through the Federal Circuit Court.

Fletcher said today that the government had avoided imposing financial penalties on end users, because in many cases it is often children who are posting bullying material online about other children.

The legislation was originally proposed in the Coalition's 2013 election campaign. One component for that policy, the opt-out internet filter, was dropped just five hours after it was announced by the then-Opposition, and was not included in the legislation introduced on Wednesday.

The establishment of the eSafety commissioner had also been criticised in the past from the larger social networks, who had complained that it would put an unnecessary regulatory burden on them when they already have appropriate content removal schemes in place. Fletcher told ABC Radio on Wednesday morning that he had listened to their concerns.

"Oh look, we've had vigorous and continuing engagement with certainly Microsoft, Yahoo7, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other players," he said.

"I do want to acknowledge here that the large social media services have significantly increased the amount of resources they allocate to dealing with complaints of cyberbullying and other such content. We are conscious of not imposing any more additional regulatory burden than is necessary to keep Australian children safe online."

A spokesperson for the parliamentary secretary told ZDNet that the legislation was 'light-touch' regulation.

"The design of the rapid removal scheme minimises the impact on industry by utilising social media sites' existing complaints handling processes and online safety initiatives.The two-tier scheme has been developed to minimise the burden on, and regulatory exposure of, social media services that cooperate with the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner."

The regulatory impact statement for the legislation estimates that the average annual cost to Australian businesses will be AU$432,000.

The legislation will be debated in the House when parliament returns in 2015, and once it reaches the senate, will likely go to the Environment and Communications Committee for scrutiny.

View the original article here

Eight social networks worth a closer look

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Summary: If you are fed up with Facebook and tired of Twitter you might want a change of social scene. Try these up and coming social networks that are well worth a look for users and brands.

SHARE: SUBSCRIBE TO: Social Enterprise By Eileen Brown for Social Business | December 2, 2014 -- 18:14 GMT Previous | Next Image 1 of 9
Do you feel that your social networking activities are becoming jaded? Are your social marketing efforts no longer getting the organic reach you need to really connect with your customers? Maybe it is time to reach a new audience on an up and coming social networking platform.
Here we round up some newcomers for you to try.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Related articles:
Ello was created as an ad free social network alternative to Facebook or Twitter. It states that it will never sell user data to advertisers or third parties, nor will it ever show advertisements. It does not enforce a real-name policy in response to Facebook's decision to enforce real names for its users. Many members of the LGBT community left Facebook for Ello.
It received $435,000 in funding from Fresh Tracks Capital in January 2014 and a further $5.5 million in venture capital after becoming a benefit organisation. It has been criticised for its minimalistic design and porn friendly approach.
Alexa rank: 1,705
Image: Ello
Related articles:
Topics: Social Enterprise, Start-Ups, Innovation
Eileen Brown is a social media consultant, author, and social business advisor who has been working with collaborative technologies for over 20 years.
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This paper will discuss the evolution, benefits and challenges of data protection for virtual environments and how a modern data protection solution can enable both virtualization professionals and storage managers to perform successful backups.

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Social networks face fines for failing to remove bullying content

Social networks that fail to remove content that the Australian government's new cybersafety tsar deems to be bullying of an Australian child will face fines of AU$17,000 per day for not complying under legislation introduced into parliament on Wednesday.
The Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014
, introduced into the House of Representatives by Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister for Communications Paul Fletcher, sets up the new eSafety Commissioner role within the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The commissioner is designed to be a one-stop-shop for Australian children, or their guardians, to lodge complaints about bullying content online. The commissioner will be empowered to investigate and seek to have the content removed if it is deemed to be bullying to a specific Australian child.
The scheme will be broken up into two tiers, with the first tier having a voluntary rapid content removal process for large social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, that already have content removal schemes in place as declared by the commissioner.
If the tier 1 social network fails to comply with requests over a 12-month period, then the commissioner may revoke its status down to tier 2.
Tier 2 social networks that fail to comply with legally binding notices to remove content face civil penalties of AU$17,000 per day.
The person who posted the content themselves will also receive a notice and be required to remove the content, apologise, and refrain from posting bullying content in future. An injunction can also be sought through the Federal Circuit Court.
Fletcher said today that the government had avoided imposing financial penalties on end users, because in many cases it is often children who are posting bullying material online about other children.
The legislation was originally proposed in the Coalition's 2013 election campaign. One component for that policy, the opt-out internet filter, was dropped just five hours after it was announced by the then-Opposition, and was not included in the legislation introduced on Wednesday.
The establishment of the eSafety commissioner had also been criticised in the past from the larger social networks, who had complained that it would put an unnecessary regulatory burden on them when they already have appropriate content removal schemes in place. Fletcher told ABC Radio on Wednesday morning that he had listened to their concerns.
"Oh look, we've had vigorous and continuing engagement with certainly Microsoft, Yahoo7, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other players," he said.
"I do want to acknowledge here that the large social media services have significantly increased the amount of resources they allocate to dealing with complaints of cyberbullying and other such content. We are conscious of not imposing any more additional regulatory burden than is necessary to keep Australian children safe online."
A spokesperson for the parliamentary secretary told ZDNet that the legislation was 'light-touch' regulation.
"The design of the rapid removal scheme minimises the impact on industry by utilising social media sites' existing complaints handling processes and online safety initiatives.The two-tier scheme has been developed to minimise the burden on, and regulatory exposure of, social media services that cooperate with the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner."
The regulatory impact statement for the legislation estimates that the average annual cost to Australian businesses will be AU$432,000.
The legislation will be debated in the House when parliament returns in 2015, and once it reaches the senate, will likely go to the Environment and Communications Committee for scrutiny.

View the original article here