Unlikely they will win. Even if they win they lose goodwill. Prediction: out of court settlement, followed by decline in NetApp revenue and profitability. Fo

Unlikely they will win. Even if they win they lose goodwill. Prediction: out of court settlement, followed by decline in NetApp revenue and profitability. Four years later NetApp is bought by or merges with another company. StorageTek was formed in 1969 and started selling their disk systems in the mid-70s. The company was started by former IBMers and they have over 600 patents. Considering they were shipping a virtual disk and snapshots product 4 years before the NetApp patent was filed, prior art seems likely.