Cisco vs Huawei lawsuit: The war heats up

CHICAGO: Huawei Technologies, being sued by Cisco Systems Inc. for allegedly unlawfully copying its software, used software mirroring Cisco's right down to the "bugs," a former Huawei employee said in court documents. However, Huawei denied it has violated Cisco's patents or copied its software. It also accused Cisco of trying to keep a competitor out of the U.S. market and said it would seek damages.

"I was told by a Huawei engineer...that new Quidway routers were being withheld from shipment because they contained too many 'problems' that were the same as Cisco routers had," Chad Reynolds said in a declaration filed at U.S. District Court in Texas.

Reynolds worked at Futurewei from April 2001 until December 2002, when he was laid off as manager of administration.

"The software 'bugs' appeared to be indicating similarity between the Cisco routers and the Huawei routers and that Huawei was actively trying to fix the Cisco common software 'bugs' to prevent Cisco from finding out what Huawei had done," he said.

"It's still a little early for us to comment, but you have to consider the source," a Huawei spokeswoman said, referring to testimony from an employee who was laid off by Huawei and a separate declaration by a current Cisco engineer.

The Chinese telecommunications gear maker stopped U.S. shipments in January before the lawsuit was filed, and recalled most of the products it had distributed for customer testing.

Cisco said Huawei's response failed to address its claims, and Huawei was seeking to draw attention from its alleged illegal actions by filing the counterclaims.

© Reuters