Cisco's history as somewhat of a patent parasite is well documented here. Cisco fired its lawyer who had combated patent trolls (after unmasking by a monster, Ray Niro).
"Sadly, patent bullying by Cisco pays off as Arista basically surrenders."So after all this injustice Arista decided to just shell out a lot of money. As the Wall Street Journal put it, "Arista Networks Inc. agreed to pay Cisco Systems Inc. $400 million as part of a settlement that resolves much of the litigation between them."
There has been lots of press coverage since, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
"Patent maximalism is a disease and its main contribution is contribution to monopolisation, or protectionism of the giants."This isn't justice; this isn't even peace or truce but a surrender. To make matters worse, no potent defense exists against such abuse (legal bullying), not even aggregators which in practice perpetuate the injustice rather than properly tacklem it; Just promoted in a press release [1, 2] titled "Peer Mountain Joins The Google-founded LOT Network":
Peer Mountain joins the LOT Network as its 259th member. The License On Transfer (LOT) Network is a non-profit community of companies providing the protection from patent assertion entities (PAE's), commonly known as patent trolls. Companies that join the LOT Network, pledge to give all other members an automatic free license to any of their patents that is acquired by a patent assertion entity.