Data center firms settle cookie suit

F5 Networks and Radware have settled a patent dispute over F5's "cookie persistence" technology. The data center gear makers announced the confidential settlement in a joint press release on Thursday. Under the terms of the agreement, Radware will license F5's technology.

F5 was awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,473,802 in October 2002. The company's cookie persistence technology is used in load balancing e-commerce traffic between servers. Specifically, it uses an HTTP cookie stored on a customer's computer to allow the customer to reconnect to the same server at a previously visited Web site. F5 filed the lawsuit against Radware and two other competitors?Netscaler and Array Networks--in March 2003. F5 had previously settled lawsuits with the two other companies, which are also licensing F5's technology.