Seachange may be beating C-COR in VOD server market share but C-COR has the courts going for them. C-COR, the company which acquired nCUBE last December, has been handed a victory in a patent-infringement case that was brought by SeaChange in June, 2000.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has overturned a decision by the US District Court. Seachange contended that the C-COR/nCUBE MediaCube-4 product infringed upon SeaChange's patent that describes a method for redundantly storing video data objects in a distributed computer system. The case will now go back to the District Court, which must determine whether the SeaChange patent is, in fact, valid.

In a press release, SeaChange stressed that the ruling would not impact its financial statements as "no costs or awards were granted to either SeaChange or C-COR." Bill Styslinger, SeaChange CEO, added that the decision would not "have any impact on SeaChange's future opportunities in the on-demand television market worldwide."

An appeal of a decision by the same district court and the same judge in a second patent-infringement case between C-COR and SeaChange is still pending. In that case, the court ruled that SeaChange deliberately infringed upon a C-COR/nCUBE US patent that allows video servers to provide scaleable video services.

Originally, the jury in that case decided that SeaChange must pay nCUBE over $2 million in damages, plus a 7% royalty on all sales of infringing products post February 1st, 2002 and Judge Farnan decided that the case warranted awarding nCUBE double damages. And just to pile it on a little more, SeaChange was ordered to pay $62,000 of interest on those damages, and legal fees and court costs totaling $1.8 million.