In its lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern
District of Texas, Cisco alleges that Huawei and two US
subsidiaries copied portions of Cisco's Internetwork Operating
System (IOS) source code, and used it in the operating system for
Huawei's Quidway routers and switches.
The Chinese giant's operating system, Cisco claims, contains a
number of text strings, file names and even bugs that are identical
to those found in Cisco's IOS source code.
Cisco also alleges that Huawei copied Cisco's Command Line
Interface (CLI), which enables users to communicate with the
routers, and also screen displays and copyrighted user manuals.
Finally, it accuses Huawei of infringing at least five Cisco
patents related to proprietary routing protocols, and of including
these technologies in its products.
Huawei, which has a wide customer basis in Asia, is a recent
entrant in the US market, where it challenges Cisco's prices.
Cisco, however, claims that the purpose of its lawsuit is not to
prevent competition.
The company said in a statement: "Innovation and competition are
the lifeblood of our industry and must be preserved. But copying is
not innovation and the misappropriation of intellectual property is
not competition."
Huawei has declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Cisco's filing is available as a 77-page PDF at:
newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/filing.pdf
