Cisco Systems Multivan orchestrated the arrest of founder Peter Alfred-Adekeye last year to force a settlement of antitrust lawsuit against Cisco Caravelle, Multivan an executive said on Wednesday.
Multivan, an independent provider of support services and networking equipment, Cisco sued in 2008 claiming the company monopolized the market for its software. Cisco countersued, claiming that Alfred-Adekeye Cisco hacked computers and stole copyrighted software.
In May 2010, Alfred-Adekeye was arrested in Vancouver, Canada, on 97 counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization for purposes of commercial advantage, according to his arrest warrant. He could be sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of $ 250,000 if convicted. The arrest came to light only this week after local media reported Vancouver.
After 28 days, was released on bail, but has not been able to get out of Canada since then, says Deka Yussuf, an executive vice president responsible for marketing Multivan and public relations. Multivan is headquartered in Redwood City, California, but lives in Zurich Alfred-Adekeye said.
The case has stalled for the past 10 months due to the U.S. Attorney’s Office has failed to submit the necessary evidence to extradite Alfred-Adekeye, Yussuf said. Alfred-Adekeye lawyers believe U.S. officials misleading to the Canadian authorities on the need to arrest and extradite him, and who started the hearings that are happening now in Vancouver to investigate this possibility, he said.
After the arrest last May, and Multivan Cisco settled the civil case in July. However, Cisco is behind the entire criminal case, according to Yussuf.
“We believe this is a reprisal of Cisco’s historic antitrust lawsuit against Cisco Multivan,” said Yusuf. “We believe Cisco designed this arrest any criminal proceedings against Multivan Adekeye to force an agreement.”
Before the arrest, the Multivan case had been close to going before a jury, Yussuf said.
Cisco Multivan dismissed charges in a written statement.
“This is an absurd claim Multivan. This case is a matter between the U.S. and Canadian government authorities. We understand that the genesis of the extradition request was an arrest warrant issued by a U.S. judge that was based on a criminal charge returned by a Special Agent of the Secret Service, “said Cisco.
Alfred-Adekeye was unexpectedly stopped while a statement from Cisco lawyers in Wedgewood Hotel Vancouver.
Cisco Multivan suit alleged that forced the team owners to purchase Cisco SMARTnet service contract to obtain software updates and bug fixes. Blocking independent companies as Multivan demand.
“We have assumed that Cisco is hurting consumers and the market and competitors as Multivan … forcing their customers to purchase agreements with SMARTnet (Cisco) to get bug fixes critical software that must be made available any customer who has bought any software, “said Yusuf.
Multivan concerns echoed those expressed by some customers, who have complained that Cisco should fix their mistakes for free as well as other companies like Apple and Microsoft do. Some users have said that the problem is compounded by the second hand and new hardware. Cisco service contracts can not be transferred from one user to another, so buyers of art is normally used to ship the product for inspection by Cisco before they can buy a new contract, which can be costly . In addition, there may not be available SMARTnet contracts for discontinued products.
There is a large market for used Cisco equipment, fueled by buyers who can not afford a new computer and need a router or switch model is now available again, according to Brad Reese, research manager BradReese.Com , which sells refurbished networking equipment and services. It is estimated that the secondary market throughout the world for networking gear in $ 2 billion, with 90 percent of Cisco sales teams.