Finjan wins injunction against firewall vendor

Web gateway vendor Finjan has won its legal battle for a permanent injunction against firewall vendor Secure Computing, now a part of McAfee, after a judge ruled in its favour yesterday.

Finjan said that a US district court in Delaware granted a permanent injunction against the sale of Secure Computing's WebWasher and TSP products for infringement of Finjan's US patents 6,092,194, 6,804,780 and 7,058,822.

The judgement reaffirmed a jury verdict in March last year which awarded Finjan $9m (£5.4m) in damages. A report in Bloomberg suggested that Secure Computing could end up paying $13.7m (£8.3m) in damages, as ordered by the judge, although Finjan has said that a final figure has yet to be confirmed.

"It is an important day for Finjan and a great win for Finjan's web security technology," said Gadi Maier, chief executive at Finjan. "We are pleased with the court's ruling regarding our ownership rights to this technology, and will enforce the injunction we obtained."

McAfee, which bought Secure Computing last September, said it will appeal the ruling.

"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," read a statement from the company.

"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."