Facebook sued: Data center designs 'nicked' for Open Compute Facebook is being sued in the US by a UK biz, which claims Zuckerberg & Co stole its blueprints for data centers. BladeRoom Group alleges the social networking giant swiped trade secrets and intellectual property on ways to install pre-fabricated, modular warehouses of servers. Specifically, BladeRoom claims Facebook took its …
In the article:
"This is the second time Facebook has been accused of treading on other people’s data centre patents."
The article doesn't really paint this as a patent issue at all though. It sounds like IP theft of trade secrets and designs, and nothing at all to do with patents?
Well, what I inferred from the article was that they did a meeting with FB on data centers. Probably brought plans, etc. with them. I'm betting someone forgot to get an NDA signed.... which basically would have told FB.. "you can't use this". Since an NDA wasn't mentioned... there's something else going on.
The fact that there are similarities between the designs does not mean one was stolen from the other. I suspect Facebook has been building data centers for a while now; in fact they announced their Open Compute Project in April 2011, months before ever meeting with BRG. It might well be that Facebook came up with the same ideas independently.
They're not talking about patents either, so this seems to have been a trade secret. Unless they can somehow prove that Facebook filched their design, I think they're going to lose this.
No, you talk w Facebook, before you step in the door, Facebook has you sign an NDA.
The trouble is that someone sees the work product in a meeting and then forgets that its not FB's IP and implements it.
I agree that there's a bit more to the story but with respect to an NDA... its a moot point. There was most likely one in place if there were meetings.
Well, it's difficult to tell really.
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"This is the second time Facebook has been accused of treading on other people’s data centre patents."
So, is this a patent infringement case? It doesn't sound like it, since they're accusing FB of stealing trade secrets. And patents are inherently public disclosures - nothing at all secret about them.
If BRG had actually taken out patents on its approach, this case would be a slam dunk in their favor. If they were relying on just keeping their methods secret, not so much. The onus is on them to guard them.
The point that they are making is that Facebook not only stole the information but then knowingly disseminated said information to other companies, public et al (via the Open Compute project). If this is the case then they were attempting to guard them .. however an unscrupulous corporation did what unscrupulous corporations do best.
Modular and containerized data centers have been around, mostly unsuccessfully, for a long time. Most of them have similar ideas. There is relatively little innovation in the ideas, but the lack of success means that the same ideas have been "invented" many times.
My guess is that these guys gave a presentation on their 'trade secrets', which duplicated the approach others were already taking.
When some of the same ideas popped up in the standardized environment that was eventually proposed, this failing company saw a chance to make money on a lawsuit.
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