Equinix, one of the leading digital infrastructure companies has been slapped with a patent infringement lawsuit at the Florida Southern District Court.
The suit, which asserts a patent pertaining to cloud network services having a gateway for subscriber-specified connection to a cloud service provider, was filed by Lorium PLLC on behalf of Cloud Conductor LLC, according to a filing from law.com. Counsel for Equinix have not yet appeared, the filing added. Cloud Conductor delivers cloud connectivity solutions to clients throughout the United States and all over the world.
On July 7, 2020, the United States Patent and Trademark Office duly and legally
issued U.S. Patent Number 10,708,085 B2 (the “085 Patent”), entitled “Cloud Network Services
Provider Having a Gateway for Subscriber Specified Connection to a Cloud Service Provider” to
Cloud Conductor. This means that Cloud Conductor is the sole owner of the ‘085 Patent and is exclusively entitled to enforce the rights associated with the same.
Many Patent Infringement Cases
Patent infringement cases, as alleged by cloud service providers, have been on the rise since the last few years. In 2020, Daedalus Blue, LLC filed a complaint in the Western District of Texas against Microsoft, claiming that Microsoft infringed the patents-in-suit with its Microsoft Azure cloud computing product.
According to the complaint, the patents-in-suit “were invented by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM),” and relate to cloud computing, such as “cloud infrastructure, cloud management, network security, database management, data processing, and data management.”
The plaintiff noted that Amazon Web Services and Oracle Corporation, competitors in the cloud computing space, have licensed the asserted patents. Daedalus Blue is the current owner and assignee of these asserted patents. The patents-in-suit are United States Patent Nos. 7,177,886 (the ’886 patent); 7,437,730 (the ’730 patent); 8,381,209 (the ’209 patent); 8,572,612 (the ’612 patent); 8,671,132 (the ’132 patent).
The ’612 patent is entitled “Automatic Scaling of Virtual Machines in a Cloud Computing Environment.” It describes systems and methods for “data processing and the scaling of resources in a cloud computing environment by efficiently utilizing virtual machines (VM) that automatically deploy and terminate based on workload.” As described in the patent, the method allows users to set up virtual machines to meet their requirements, and then the cloud system deployed the VM to meet the user specifications.
Specifically, claim 1 of the ’612 patent states describes the patented system as “a method of automatic scaling of virtual machines in a cloud computing environment, the cloud computing environment comprising a plurality of (VMs), the VMs comprising modules of automated computing machinery installed upon cloud computers disposed within a data center, the cloud computing environment further comprising a cloud operating system and a data center administration server operably coupled to the VMs.”
Microsoft allegedly infringed the asserted patents through its Azure service. In particular, Daedalus Blue averred that Microsoft infringed the ’612 patent through its Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) product, which purportedly uses “‘a method of autonomic scaling of virtual machines in a cloud computing environment’ that allows for dynamic deploying and maintenance of virtual machine instances in Azure cloud, wherein the virtual machine scaling is automatically adjusted based on the workload increase or decrease in load.”
Join the conversation at W.Media’s Asia Pacific Cloud & Datacenter Awards programme, where enterprise users and industry experts will come together to share their insights and opinions on data centre projects and hyperscale cooling innovations. If you are interested in nominating or sponsoring, visit our Awards Page for more information. Nominations are open until 31st July.
