A federal court rejected Arris Group's motion to find SeaChange International in contempt for allegedly violating a 2006 injunction that barred SeaChange from using a video-on-demand patent owned by Arris.
The legal dispute dates back to 2001, when Larry Ellison’s nCube -- later bought by C-COR, which was subsequently acquired by Arris -- filed suit alleging that SeaChange’s interactive TV video system infringed an nCube patent.
In May 2002, a jury found that SeaChange VOD software and systems infringed nCube’s U.S. Patent No. 5,805,804, “Method and apparatus for scalable, high-bandwidth storage retrieval and transportation of multimedia data on a network.” SeaChange appealed the decision but lost the appeal in January 2006 and subsequently paid C-COR about $8 million. SeaChange also redesigned its video system.
Then in July 2009, Arris filed a motion alleging that SeaChange’s 2002 workaround violated the injunction entered in the nCube case.
On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware denied Arris's request to hold SeaChange in contempt related to the 2006 injunction.
Arris said in a statement, "The court’s ruling does not find that SeaChange product has avoided infringement of Arris intellectual property, nor does it resolve the litigation between Arris and SeaChange. Arris continues to believe the SeaChange products infringe its patent."
SeaChange CEO Raghu Rau said in a statement that “we are pleased that, with today’s rejection of Arris’s claim, the two companies can go back to competing in their respective markets on the strength of their technology and service, instead of in the courts.”
