EMC and Hitachi sue and counter-sue

Hitachi has responded to last week's lawsuit from arch-rival EMC by firing back a missive from its own lawyers, alleging EMC is infringing eight of its own patents.

Hitachi, which owns storage giant HDS, one of EMC's biggest competitors, did not elaborate on the nature of the patents being infringed.

However, it did say that EMC's flagship Clariion and Symmetrix products infringe its intellectual property, and it wants an injunction against the sale of both.

In a short statement, Hitachi claimed it had been forced to take this action because of the EMC lawsuit.

Isao Ono, senior corporate officer and senior group executive, information business group of Hitachi, said: "Since EMC has chosen to compete in the courtroom rather than in the marketplace, Hitachi has no choice but to fight back with its own extensive patent portfolio in this field."

EMC today described Hitachi's lawsuit as an effort to distract the market from its own infringements.

An EMC spokeswoman said the company hadn't had a chance to review the validity of the charges, but had been expecting the suit to arrive.

She said: "It is quite common in these cases for the accused on a lawsuit to fire off a counter suit. Hitachi are more trying to distract the market, whereas our suit is about the protection of intellectual property, pure and simple."

For its part, EMC says Hitachi's systems infringe six patents to do with replication software - software which allows data to be quickly copied to remote locations for back-up. It wants Hitachi to stop selling its replication products in the US.

EMC's spokeswoman added: "Hitachi has a history of patent infringement. This has now gone on too long and EMC can simply not allow it anymore."