barracuda spam

Barracuda Networks, Inc. is a privately held company providing firewall products to block e-mail spam, viruses, spyware, load balancing and instant messaging software.

Barracuda Networks was established in 2002 and since June 2007 is based in Campbell, California, having previously operated in Mountain View, California and Cupertino, California.

In January 2006, it closed its first outside investment of $40 million from Sequoia Capital and Francisco Partners. Sequoia Capital had previously provided financing to Cisco Systems, Google, Netscreen, and Yahoo!. Francisco Partners, whose founders include technology investment banker pioneer Sandy Robertson, is a large private equity firm.

On January 29, 2008, Barracuda Networks was sued by Trend Micro over their use of the open source anti-virus software Clam AntiVirus, which Trend Micro claims to be in violation of their patent on 'anti-virus detection on an SMTP or FTP gateway'. In addition to providing samples of prior art and pointing out possible procedurally issues that would render Trend Micro's patent invalid, Barracuda Networks launched a countersuit against Trend Micro claiming Trend Micro violated several antivirus patents Barracuda Networks had acquired from IBM.