Yesterday, Citrix filed a lawsuit against Workspot for patent infringement and false and misleading advertising.
We took this action only after serious consideration and multiple attempts to inform Workspot of the false and misleading nature of their public statements. Workspot, however, chose to continue to mislead the market and has continuously used Citrix patented features of our XenApp and XenDesktop products and cloud services without permission or license.
The basis of our patent infringement action today is Workspot’s intentional inclusion in their VDI platform of proprietary features protected by at least four Citrix patents. These patented features are core to XenApp and XenDesktop and important differentiators for Citrix. Further, Workspot has engaged in frequent and substantial mischaracterizations of XenApp and XenDesktop. These mischaracterizations have unfairly and intentionally misled the market about our features and the performance of our products.
At Citrix, we value innovation and have a proven track record of delivering world-class innovation to our customers and partners around the world. Our foundational innovations in application virtualization and remoting protocols date back to the early ‘90s, are still at the core of our XenApp and XenDesktop products and cloud services today, and were even licensed to Microsoft in the second-half of the ‘90s to form the basis of their remote desktop protocol.
And thanks to our annual investment of more than $400 million in R&D supported by 2,100 employees across our engineering and product teams, our innovation is accelerating. Today these innovations are protected by over 3,500 issued and pending worldwide patents, which were ranked 7th among computer software companies in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) most recent patent portfolio power ranking.
Citrix has always welcomed competition, and our action does not signal a change in our approach. We are as eager as ever to deliver value to our customers through Citrix Cloud Services, delivering the Workspace of the future, and our roadmap for the secure digital perimeter.
We have never viewed, and never will view, competition alone as a reason to litigate. But competition must be fair – uncompensated exploitation of core patented features that our engineering and product teams worked hard to create over decades is simply unfair and unreasonable – regardless of the size of the competitor.
For us, it comes down to a simple set of values. We respect the intellectual property rights of other companies, and we expect other companies to respect our intellectual property. We tell the truth about our products and competitive products, and we expect our competitors to do the same. We filed this lawsuit to defend these simple values.
After reading this, I understand if you have questions, especially if you are a customer or partner. We’re here to answer your questions, so please reach out to your sales representative, technical support manager, or contact me here.
