Originally Posted By: andy
If I remember correctly there are still some key patents in the area that haven't expired yet but will soon. Can't remember where I read that though.

Some discussion on the patents here:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/NetApp's_filesystem_patents

The early NetApp patent appears to have expired some time last year, although the USPTO has a "patent term calculator" Excel spreadsheet that you can download that tries to compute these things and requires you to answer a bunch weird questions and I might not have gotten them all correct, yadda yadda disclaimers here. Still, it's probably no coincidence that Apple has made some sort of a decision based on a reading of these issues.

Snide thought: Apple could just buy NetApp. They've certainly got plenty of cash in the bank, and NetApp's market cap is "only" $7 billion. Chump change for Apple.