Dive Brief:
- According to a lawsuit filed this week, Arista Networks is suing Cisco for alleged antitrust violations.
- Arista has accused Cisco of “monopolistic business practices that unfairly harms both competing vendors and end users,” eWEEk reports.
- Arista's antitrust allegations are part of its response to Cisco's patent infringement case and “came about as a result of evidence uncovered during the discovery part of the legal proceedings,” Arista officials said.
Dive Insight:
The Arista lawsuit against Cisco comes at an interesting time, as Thursday, the International Trade Commission is expected to announce a decision regarding the five patent infringement complaints Cisco filed against Arista in December 2014.
In the lawsuit filed by Arista, officials allege Cisco “looked to unfairly undermine rivals in the competitive networking space by claiming patent infringement on its command-line interface (CLI),” eWEEK reports.
Cisco is also accused of punishing customers who used networking products from other vendors.
"Taken together, Cisco's conduct harms consumers and stifles more innovative and efficient technology, and recently discovered Cisco documents demonstrate that its conduct was part of a deliberate scheme to harm competition," Arista officials said.
Cisco said Arista's complaints are unfounded and claims that many of the features in Arista's EOS network operating system were patented by former Cisco employees. Several top executives at Arista are former Cisco employees.