Deep Nines, Inc., a network security solutions provider, filed a lawsuit yesterday against McAfee, Inc., alleging infringement and false marking of its recently issued U.S. patent on a key network security technology. The alleged infringement and false marking concerns U.S. patent number 7,058,976, issued to DeepNines on June 6, 2006, which involves combining a firewall and a signature-based intrusion detection/prevention solution (IDS/IPS) on a single, inline device that takes action in real-time. DeepNines filed and won an interference against McAfee regarding this patent in March 2005, but McAfee has continued to mark and sell products that claim this patent as their own. DeepNines is asking the court for damages and a permanent injunction to prevent McAfee from marketing and selling the infringing products. DeepNines is being represented by the law firm Fish & Richardson P.C. "We intend to protect our intellectual property, just as we respect the intellectual property rights of others," said Dan Jackson, president of DeepNines. "Although DeepNines continuously monitors the products of its competitors, at this point, our focus remains on McAfee for both infringing our patent and falsely marking its products with a patent that is invalid and purports to claim the same invention covered by our patent."