back to article Cisco to face trial over trade secrets theft, NDA breach claims after losing attempt to swat Leadfactors lawsuit

Cisco will face trial in a long-running case over claims that it stole trade secrets from an enterprise collaboration startup, a US judge has ruled. As per the October 18 order by Judge Sunil Kulkarni at the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, Switchzilla lost its attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed, meaning …

  1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Ahh Cisco

    Ahh Pancho, you dang caught me.

    (yes I'm that old)

  2. CheesyTheClown

    2008 was long past the point of original thinking.

    I am more than happy to talk smack about Cisco’s business practices. I think Cisco is one of the dirtiest companies on the market at this time and the funny thing is, they don’t even realize it. It’s one big family of “We drank to Kool-Aid” out there in San Jose. I mean really, you have never met a more brainwashed group of… groupies than the Tasman campus groupies.

    That said, I was working at a major competitor to Cisco in the collaboration gig at the time. In fact, Cisco acquired them for something like 1.8 gazillion dollars. And one thing I’ll tell you about the social and conferencing market is that there hasn’t been an original thought in that market since Walt Disney built Epcot.

    Everything in that entire field is strictly logical evolution and if there is even a single patentable idea is social collaboration anymore, I’ll eat my socks… and that’s just gross.

    I think the last piece of innovation in that field was when Zoom first reared its ugly head and rendered video in a 3D oriented fashion. That really threw us through a loop. But really, by 2008, there was nothing left to invent. We are soooooo long past that point

    1. eldakka

      Re: 2008 was long past the point of original thinking.

      This is about trade secrets, not patents. They are not equivalent.

      Source code can be a trade secret, even if it implements a common idea, the implementation details are trade secrets.

  3. spold Silver badge
    Joke

    Watch-out

    They will be stealing Huawei's next

    (humor - no gratuitous downvotes for mentioning them please :-) )

  4. sanmigueelbeer Silver badge

    Not sure why Cisco is trying to fight this.

    Compensate what he rightfully deserves. And if I was to borrow a quote from a Cisco executive, (money) "`tis only numbers".

  5. sanmigueelbeer Silver badge

    Cisco Webex Hologram

    Cisco Webex Hologram

    Be An Early Adopter (aka Pilot Program)

    1. ITMA Silver badge

      Re: Cisco Webex Hologram

      Just becaue something looks 3D deos NOT make it a hologram.

      The data content of a true hologram is hugely, staggeringly VAST.

      The images Microsoft's Hololens produces are NOT holograms.

      Those Tupac on stage things are NOT holograms. Strictly speaking they are video version of Pepper's Ghost, a Victorian optical illusion, with no parallax. A person to the left of the stage sees EXACTLY the same as a person off to the right. With a TRUE hologram they each see a different view.

      So even if three people, wearing a headset each, saw the same "projection" from a different viewpoint, that still doesn't make it a hologram, since each would simply be viewing a different projection generated for their viewpoint only by their device.

      It would require all three seeing the same "projection" from a SINGLE device but viewing from different places - one on the left, one in the centre and one to the right - and yet EACH seeing a different image with correct view for their position to even get close to a hologram. And if they moved position their viewpoint they see should also change to match - all from the SAME projection.

  6. Potemkine! Silver badge

    He sued in 2013

    and 8 years later there's still no trial.

    The best judicial system money can buy, cannot it?

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Depends on who has the most money, obviously.

  7. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    ConnectBeam was contacted in 2008 for some discussions, Cisco said thanks for talking to us and walked away. ConnectBeam subsequently collapsed "as it had lost its biggest customer" ... Was Cisco purchasing from / making some kind of financial investment in ConnectBeam or is "the customer" someone else entirely?

    No doubt Cisco probably did steal IP - that's the way of big corp nowadays - but I don't understand the background.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Whoa, you mean these guys invented 'profiles' and 'tagging' and 'bookmarking' and then evil Cisco just went and stole these valuable proprietary TRADE SECRETS and made their own social network with PROFILES and TAGGING and BOOKMARKING?

  9. DougMac

    Sounds like they took a look at it, said "wow, this is a piece of crap, we can do better".

    And then they did.

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