Microsoft in court yet again

San Jose, CA-based Alacritech has won a preliminary injunction in a US District Court to prevent Microsoft from selling its “Chimney” TCP offload architecture slated to be available in both the “Longhorn” version of the Windows operating system and in the Scalable Networking Pack for Windows Server 2003.

Alacritech sued Microsoft in a Federal District Court on August 11, 2004, alleging that Microsoft’s existing and future operating systems containing the “Chimney” TCP offload architecture uses Alacritech’s proprietary SLIC Technology architecture.

The suit is based on two of Alacritech’s fundamental patents relating to scalable networking, US Patent No. 6,427,171 and Patent No. 6,987,868, both entitled “Protocol Processing Stack for use with Intelligent Network Interface Device."

“After Alacritech discovered that Microsoft Chimney is based on intellectual property that we developed, patented and own, we offered Microsoft a license,” said Larry Boucher, president and CEO, Alacritech.

“Microsoft rejected licensing terms that would be acceptable to us. We were forced to sue Microsoft to stop them from continuing to infringe, and inducing others to infringe, on our intellectual property rights. We are very pleased with the Court’s decision in this matter.”