There's some news on the Trend Micro v.Barracuda Networks case. That is the one where Trend Micro sued Barracuda over ClamAV and brought a complaint to the International Trade Commission. Barracuda has just filed a countersuit in California, alleging patent infringement by Trend Micro.

The already vicious lawsuit involving Barracuda Networks and Trend Micro that is currently in discovery in front of the American International Trade Commission (ITC) just turned nastier. Barracuda has filed its own patent infringement claim against Trend Micro, based upon three recently acquired patents.

It's unusual for companies engaged in patent litigation to comment on how the fight is going. But Barracuda Networks CEO Dean Drako has openly sought FOSS community support for his company's defense again a Trend Micro lawsuit that, while filed against his company, is really about ClamAV.

Barracuda Networks CEO Dean Drako says his company won't license a virus scanning patent from Trend Micro, and he's going to users to help build Barracuda's case file of prior art—previous software products and documentation that could help invalidate the patent in court.

"Join us and the ScriptumLibre.org Foundation in boycotting all products and services sold by Trend Micro. The proprietary software company Trend Micro has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Barracuda Systems. They claim that Barracuda is violating their patent by distributing the free software antivirus program ClamAV..."

"The ScriptumLibre.org Foundation issued a call today for a worldwide boycott on Trend Micro products. The call comes as a response to the public announcement on January 29th that a lawsuit was filed by Trend Micro in November 2007, which claims that software-security company Barracuda Networks is infringing its U.S.-patent on software that filters out viruses on Internet gateway computers..."

Barracuda Networks is actively seeking the support of the free and open source software (FOSS) community in its battle against a patent suit brought against it by Trend Micro.

Goran Fransson, a Swedish developer and entrepreneur, has given a deposition in the Barracuda-Trend Micro case that appears to seriously undermine Trend Micro's patent on gateway virus scanning.

It seems like everyone is talking about Barracuda, Trend Micro, ClamAV, and what it has to do with open-source. The whole issue is made complicated mostly because of a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that the two companies have been throwing at each other. In fact, it is getting hard to tell who is right and who is wrong through all the FUD.