Not as crazy as it sounds. Free Software Foundation holds several software copyrights that they require be distributed at no cost. The lawsuit filed in New York claims that Cisco is selling various “Linksys” software programs which have the foundation’s free software imbedded in it and aren’t making the source code available for free.
Summary courtesy Courthousenews
From 2008 to 2012. This is according to Cisco which is developing better video networking capacity. This isn’t a surprise but I think some great leaps in video creativity in the next few years. What if most technical documentation were videos? Then this information might have a chance of being useful. Imagine!
Multiven, a independent service provider for router and networking products claims that Cisco which has a huge market share of the router business uses it’s Smartnet service and maintenance contracts for anti-competitive purposes by not providing bug fixes and updates to customers who don’t purchase these Smartnet contracts. Multiven brought suit against Cisco in Federal District Court in San Jose, Northern Distric of California.
A couple interesting things: The complaint does a good job of providing the range and scope of Cisco’s market with lots of revenue figures and information about its partners and other market players. Also, in looking at recent SEC filings, I noticed that Cisco does a poor job of disclosing it’s litigation, mentioning a recent suit and then referencing risk factors as a place where it discusses additional legal issues. My suspicion is that there are other antitrust lawsuits out there against Cisco but that’s not information gleaned from their recent 10-Q and 10-K. It seems like that information should be disclosed but the SEC is pretty lax, to my mind, about what gets disclosed and in its specificity.
Complaint courtesy Courthousenews
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 