SecureInfo, Telos to collaborate after ending legal skirmishes
What do you know: These two companies were battling in court only days ago, accusing each other of intellectual property infringement; they have settled, and now are strategic partners
”
A few years before winning the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer published one of his more popular books, Enemies: A Love Story. The book’s title also captures the following: San Antonio, Texas-based SecureInfo and Ashburn, Virginia-based Telos have settled all pending litigation between them. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed the suit filed on 6 May 2005 by SecureInfo, and the counterclaim filed 7 November 2005 by Telos. Under terms of the settlement, claims that Telos infringed the intellectual property or copyright of SecureInfo, and that SecureInfo infringed Telos patents granted or in process, have been mutually dismissed.
”
This is just the beginning, however. During the litigation process, Telos and SecureInfo executives identified several major partnership opportunities which would provide each company with new security offerings for customers in both government and commercial markets. As a result of this realization, the companies have formed a strategic partnership. SecureInfo will OEM and market the continuous assessment and process enforcer capabilities developed by Xacta, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telos, as part of SecureInfo’s certification and accreditation product solution. Telos will bolster its information security solutions by offering SecureInfo’s Remote Managed Security Services.
”
SecureInfo CEO, John Linton said: “We respect Telos’ leadership in continuous assessment and information assurance and its management team as a strong, well established security solutions provider.” Telos CEO, John B. Wood, said: “We recognize SecureInfo as a market leader in managed security and compliance solutions.” If the new relationship between the two companies bring Singer’s book to mind, they also remind us of one of Oscar Wilde’s one-liners (the line, from The Importance of Being Ernest, refers to women, but applies to the corporate world as well): “Women call each other sister only when they have called each other a lot of things first.”
