Pivot3 Picks Fight With PivotStor

Video storage specialist Pivot3 has taken legal action against PivotStor, accusing the archiving vendor of trademark infringement.

Pivot3 announced this morning that it has filed a legal motion with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office opposing the use of the name PivotStor by the San Diego-based firm.

At the end of the day, they are a storage company and we are a storage and a server company, and it has the potential to be confusing to customers,” says Lee Caswell, Pivot3’s co-founder and chief marketing officer. “We’re going toe to toe with EMC and Dell, so having someone that could potentially confuse our customers about what we are doing is something that we could not afford.”

Founded in 2003, Pivot3 has racked up about 60 customers for its storage systems, although the startup is now looking to expand its reach beyond its core video surveillance niche. The vendor, for example, recently launched what it describes as ’serverless computing’ , a combination of storage and server virtualization.

PivotStor, which was founded last year, declined to comment on the legal action when Byte and Switch contacted the company earlier today.Pivot3’s lawsuit is the latest in a spate of recent storage-related legal actions. Last week, for example, backup specialist Asigra filed a lawsuit against rival vendor Robobak for alleged libel and misleading advertising.

Most of the recent storage disputes, however, have centered on patents. Crossroads Systems, for example, recently accused 10 firms of infringing its storage patents. Other firms that have been involved in recent patent disputes include STEC and Seagate, NetApp and Sun, and Quantum and Riverbed .Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.