Plaintiff
2 cases as plaintiff.
Company overview. Vixel Corporation was a Washington-based maker of Fibre Channel storage-networking hardware. Incorporated in 1991 as Photonics Research Incorporated, it renamed to Vixel in February 1995 and was headquartered in Bothell, Washington. It was publicly traded on Nasdaq (ticker: VIXL); as of August 2001 its market capitalization was roughly $42 million, and it reported ~$12.5 million revenue for the first half of fiscal 2001 amid losses. At its October 2003 acquisition it employed about 115 people. Emulex Corp. (Costa Mesa, California) acquired Vixel for $310 million in cash ($10/share), closing November 13, 2003; Vixel therefore no longer exists as an independent company.
Products / operations. Vixel developed and sold Fibre Channel interconnect products for storage area networks (SANs), including embedded storage switches built on a "switch-on-a-chip" design marketed as InSpeed, plus SAN switches, hubs, and integrated management software. It acquired Fibre Channel switch startup Arcxel Technologies to move into high-end switches, and had OEM relationships with Sun Microsystems, Compaq, NEC, and Hewlett-Packard. In 2002 it sold its software division to focus exclusively on switch hardware, and earlier divested its optical-transceiver business.
Patent-litigation posture. The two tracked cases show Vixel solely as plaintiff (2 cases, 0 as defendant) — but this is an operating company enforcing patents developed in-house, not an NPE. Both suits targeted direct storage-switch competitors over patents based on applications filed by Vixel's CTO Stuart Berman in 1997, covering Fibre Channel switching fabrics and arbitrated-loop interconnection. Venues were the District of Delaware and the Northern District of California — not a plaintiff-friendly forum like the Eastern District of Texas.
Notable cases / context. In early 2003 Vixel sued QLogic in Delaware over U.S. Patent No. 6,118,776, then sued Brocade Communications in the Northern District of California in May 2003 over that patent plus Nos. 6,185,203 and 6,470,007, targeting Brocade's SilkWorm switch features. After Emulex absorbed Vixel, QLogic countersued Emulex; the disputes settled in June 2004 under a cross-license with royalties, and Emulex and Brocade later agreed to a three-year litigation standstill as they partnered on SMB products.
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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.
Vixel sued QLogic in the District of Delaware alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,118,776, described in contemporaneous reporting as "hotly contested". The docket number and final disposition are not confirmed in the narrative.