Cisco Settles 2008 Antitrust Lawsuit With Maintenance Firm
Multiven, based in Redwood City, Calif., issued a statement on the settlement Monday. It will drop its claims against Cisco and Cisco will drop counter-claims against Multiven, the collaboration platform Pingsta and Peter Alfred-Adekeye, founder of Pingsta and CEO of Multiven.
Originally filed Dec. 1, 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, Multiven's suit accused Cisco of suppressing competition for services and maintenance on Cisco networking equipment by withholding software updates and bug fixes for products from third party maintenance companies that it had made to customers of its SMARTnet service.
At the time, Cisco said that "Cisco customers are in no way required to purchase services from Cisco. There are thousands of partners who offer service programs for Cisco products, including bug fixes."
Alfred-Adekeye said in a statement released by Multiven Monday that the complaints against Cisco are "successfully resolved."
"We are pleased that the concerns raised in our complaint against Cisco are now successfully resolved and look forward to competing and providing customers with further choice and value when procuring Internet infrastructure maintenance services," he said.
A Mulitven spokesman declined a request for additional comment by CRN.
The details of the settlement, according to Multiven, are confidential. According to a Cisco spokesperson, Cisco did not have to pay anything to Multiven.
"We are gratified that the court found in Cisco's favor regarding Multiven's unauthorized access to Cisco's computer network, and that Multiven dropped all of its claims against Cisco without Cisco paying any money to Multiven," said Cisco spokesperson Kristin Carvell in a statement e-mailed to CRN.
The settlement is effective July 19. According to an order filed July 28, Cisco and Multiven will each pay their own legal costs.