Symantec Alleges Patent Infringement Against Veeam, Acronis

Symantec this week filed patent-infringement lawsuits against competing backup and recovery software vendor Veeam, and unveiled details about a similar lawsuit filed in November against Acronis.

In its lawsuit against Veeam, Symantec alleged that company of infringing on patents related to the replication of data.

Symantec said Acronis infringed on patents related to disaster recovery and to backup and recovery in virtualized environments.

Symantec declined to respond to requests for more information other than to point to a statement on its Web site which reads, "Symantec recently filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Acronis and yesterday filed suit against Veeam Software. Symantec invests deeply in its research and development in order to provide its customers with innovative technologies. Acronis and Veeam unlawfully leverage Symantec patented technologies in their respective backup and replication products. This free riding on Symantec is wrong and Symantec has filed these lawsuits to protect its intellectual property."

Both Acronis and Veeam issued statements and declined to comment further.

Acronis, in response, said in its statement, "We are aware of the complaint, and plan to defend it vigorously. This type of litigation happens all of the time between competitors in the software business and has no effect today on our existing customers or our ability to sell software to new customers."

Veeam, in its statement, said, "We do not believe the case has merit, we are looking into the claims carefully, and we will issue an official comment when this analysis is completed."

The two lawsuits are both available on the Symantec Web site.

In Symantec's lawsuit against Veeam, which was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Santa Jose, Calif., Symantec accused Veeam of four counts of infringement.

They include alleged infringement of Symantec patent number 7,093,086, which refers to using virtual machines for disaster recovery and backup; 6,931,558, which refers to methods for restoring data; 7,191,299, which is related to data replication; and 7,254,682, which is related to the creation of data snapshots.

Symantec's lawsuit against Acronis, which was filed in November in the same court, includes five alleged infringements. One of those, the alleged infringement related to patent number 7,093,086, was also included in the Veeam lawsuit.

The other four allegedly infringed patents include 7,565,517, which refers to targeting captured images new hardware; 6,615,365, which is related to storing computer disk images in an imaged partition; 7,266,655, which refers to synthesized backup sets; and 7,322,010, which is related to using a graphical user interface to map computer resources.