EMC goes into battle with HP

Hewlett Packard has been hit with a preliminary injunction by storage vendor EMC, stopping it from using the letters MC in any of its enterprise products.

In a complaint filed at Boston District Court on 25 March, EMC claimed that the HP Surestore E Disk Array MC256 product infringed on its brand name and trademarks.

Judge Tauro upheld the complaint.

The MC256 was launched in direct competition to EMC's Symmetrix product and the company claims that it is referred to by HP as the E MC256.

Paul Dacier, vice president and general counsel at EMC, said: 'HP's attempt to confuse the market and use EMC's name to market a product is an insult to customers and a violation of our registered trademarks. We protect our trademarks vigorously and will not permit these violations.'

The battle between the two companies started with the May launch of HP's MC256, in partnership with Hitachi Data Systems. The launch of the product threw an existing agreement between HP and EMC into disarray.

Until the tie-up with Hitachi, HP had resold EMC's symmetrix range as part of its San package.

But EMC realised the threat from HP's move and decided to approach the vendor's resellers and customers to keep its route to market open (PC Dealer, 19 May).

The move by EMC led to its contract with HP being cancelled.

One HP reseller said: 'HP launching the MC256 obviously made EMC extremely bitter. EMC has a very long memory and won't forget this easily. I suspect we will see more situations like this between the two in the future.'

Nick Dagg, enterprise storage marketing manager at HP, said: 'I think this shows that we are putting a lot of pressure on the market and are being very successful.' He added: 'We are only concerned with pushing the product.'