McAfee defiant after latest Finjan patent defeat

McAfee is playing down suggestions that a patent ruling in favour of Israeli security outfit Finjan will affect its ability to sell the Web Gateway appliance it acquired in buying Secure Computing a year ago.

Finjan claims the US District Court of Delaware has issued a permanent injunction against Secure's new owners, McAfee, from selling the product, formerly known as Webwasher, and second system, formerly known as CyberGuard TSP.

The ruling appears to back up an earlier jury verdict from March 2008 that resulted in a judge awarding Finjan compensation of 16 percent of Webwasher's total sales revenue, plus 8 percent of TSP's.

The case goes back to June 2006 when Finjan first launched the case against Secure, claiming it had infringed US patents 6,092,194, 6,804,780, and 7,058,822, which relate to "systems and methods for protecting a computer and a network from hostile downloadables and/or malicious code." These patents were first lodged in 1996, before Finjan was founded.

New owners McAfee are pursuing the same fighting tactics used by Secure in the case, and are refusing to concede any ground.

"A court ruling in this case has been expected since April 2008 when the court was presented with post trial motions after a jury in March 2008 awarded damages in this case. The product we sell today has been redesigned and this ruling will have no impact on our ability to continue selling this product to new customers, nor will it impact any customers that purchased prior versions of this product. McAfee intends to appeal this ruling," said McAfee official, Joris Evers.

Finjan's tone remains equally unchanged. "It is an important day for Finjan and a great win for Finjan's web security technology," said Finjan CEO, Gadi Maier. "We are pleased with the Court's ruling regarding our ownership rights to this technology and Finjan will enforce the injunction we obtained," he said.