How dumb can a company be? Read on ..

zoiks

Lifer
Jan 13, 2000
11,787
3
81
From adtmag.com

Cisco sues Chinese company; alleges IOS copying

By John K. Waters

Cisco Systems is suing a Chinese technology company for allegedly stealing its software, a move officials say is the first of its kind for Cisco.

The San Jose, Calif.-based network equipment maker filed suit last week in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas, charging that China's Huawei Technologies unlawfully copied the source code of Cisco's Internet Operating System (IOS). Cisco also charged that Huawei copied portions of copyrighted technical manuals and included them in its own user manuals. Cisco is seeking injunctions to block the manufacture and sale of Huawei equipment, as well as triple damages.

Cisco is suing Huawei Technologies and its subsidiaries, Huawei America Inc. and FutureWei Technologies Inc. Cisco filed the lawsuit in Texas because Huawei America is based in Plano.

Cisco is the network-computing industry's leading router maker, commanding roughly 70% of the market. Cisco routers are widely used on the Internet and in corporate intranets, and the IOS is the primary control program used in most of that hardware.

The IOS is considered to be an extremely powerful and complex operating system, with an equally complex configuration language. Cisco is charging that Huawei included the IOS code in the operating system for its Quidway routers and switches. Huawei's operating system contains a number of text strings, file names and even bugs that are identical to those found in the IOS source code, Cisco alleges.

Huawei is China's largest telecom equipment maker and Cisco's best-known competitor in Asia. Founded in 1988, the company expanded into computer-networking gear in recent years. Huawei is challenging Cisco's dominance in the East by offering similar internetworking equipment at much lower prices. The company's customer list includes China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, China Netcom Thai AIS, South Korea Telecom, SingTel, Hutchison Global Crossing, PCCW and Brazil's Telemar, among others. Huawei reported sales last year of $2.7 billion, down 12% from a year earlier.


For the rest of the story, please
go to http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=7203

 

db

Lifer
Dec 6, 1999
10,575
292
126
This is not an uncommon practice in China, we just don't usually hear about it.
Also sometimes electrical products from there (sold in America) do not have UL approval, or the UL approval is forged.
 

tk149

Diamond Member
Apr 3, 2002
7,253
1
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Anybody else remember when Apple Computer sued Franklin Computers (they built Apple ][ clones) because Franklin stole the original Apple DOS code and renamed it? Franklin's DOS even had the names of the Apple programmers in their code.

From: Apple v. Franklin

James Huston, an Apple systems programmer, concluded that the Franklin programs were ?unquestionably copied from Apple and could not have been independently created.? He reached this conclusion not only because it is ?almost impossible for so many lines of code? to be identically written, but also because his name, which he had embedded in one program (Master Create), and the word ?Applesoft?, which was embedded in another (DOS 3.3), appeared on the Franklin master disk.


"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."