Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Company overview. Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. was a networking-equipment company founded in 1995 and headquartered in San Jose, California. It went public on NASDAQ in May 1999 under ticker BRCD and, at its peak, reported roughly $2.3 billion in annual revenue (FY2016) with about 6,000 employees. On November 17, 2017, Broadcom Limited completed a ~$5.5 billion acquisition of Brocade, after which Brocade's stock was delisted and it operated as an indirect subsidiary of Broadcom; Broadcom subsequently sold off parts of the business (e.g., Ruckus Wireless to ARRIS, data-center switching to Extreme Networks). Brocade no longer exists as an independent public company.
Products / operations. Brocade was a leading supplier of storage-area networking (SAN) and IP networking hardware, software, and services. Its main product lines included Fibre Channel SAN directors, switches, and fabric products (the SilkWorm family), Ethernet switches and routers, Ethernet-fabric data-center switches, network operating systems (e.g., Fabric OS), and software-defined-networking/virtualization products acquired via Foundry Networks (2008) and Vyatta. Customers were enterprise data centers, OEMs, and service providers; the company claimed roughly 70% of the SAN switching market at points in its history. This is clearly an operating company with real products and manufacturing-scale operations, not a patent-holding shell.
Patent-litigation posture. In the tracked database, Brocade appears once — as a defendant, with zero plaintiff cases — in Vixel Corporation v. Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., filed May 23, 2003, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The posture is a product company defending a competitor patent suit, not an NPE asserting an acquired portfolio, and the venue is Northern California (not a plaintiff-friendly outlier like E.D. Tex.).
Notable case context. Vixel — itself a Fibre Channel switch vendor (and later acquired by Emulex in November 2003) — alleged Brocade infringed three Fibre Channel-related patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 6,185,203; 6,470,007; and 6,118,776) through products and features including SilkWorm switches with QuickLoop and Fabric Assist. Vixel filed a similar suit against QLogic around the same time. In late 2004, Emulex and Brocade announced the claims were dismissed without prejudice under a three-year litigation standstill, with no licenses or payments exchanged. No other Brocade suits appear in the tracked data.
Vixel sued Brocade in the Northern District of California, asserting U.S. Patent Nos. 6,118,776, 6,185,203, and 6,470,007 over Brocade SilkWorm features QuickLoop and Fabric Assist. Brocade SEC filings indicate the parties later agreed to a three-year standstill, consistent with a 2004 settlement.