Commvault signed, sealed, and delivered paperwork to the Delaware District Court today against competitors Cohesity and Rubrik, alleging that the Silicon Valley-based startups infringed on seven of Commvault's patents relating to cloud, data deduplication, snapshots, search, security, and virtualization.

According to Commvault, Cohesity and Rubrik short circuited the “research-and-development process, minimized the investment necessary to have competitive products, and forced Commvault to compete against its own inventions."

The lawsuit specifically cites infringement on technologies including a "metabase to identify data objects" to then identify what objects are in data storage, to methods for management of virtualization data, and data deduplication management across multiple cloud storage sites. It asks the court to put an end to the alleged intellectual property infringement and to award monetary damages.

“The unauthorized use of our patented technology by Rubrik and Cohesity forces us to compete against our own inventions," said Marcus Muller, Commvault’s VP and chief intellectual property counsel, in a statement. "This litigation is essential to protect the innovations that Commvault has pioneered through our deep, sustained investments in [research and development]. We welcome competition, but we must demand respect for intellectual property to ensure a fair and healthy marketplace.”

A Rubrik spokesperson said the company “does not comment on pending litigation,” while Cohesity CMO Lynn Lucas called the lawsuit "an attempt to slow our rapid growth and impede our accelerating success."

"It is not uncommon for legacy vendors to attempt to disrupt the disruptors with frivolous lawsuits in an attempt to stifle innovation and sales," Lucas said in an email. "In this case, we were made aware of Commvault’s lawsuit not by their legal representatives but via the media. We believe there is no merit to this complaint, and we will of course stand our ground and defend our technology vigorously."

All three companies lead the data protection and management sector, with Commvault being a veteran in the industry and Rubrik and Cohesity as well-funded newcomers. They all compete for customers seeking hybrid-cloud data protection and management services.

“Commvault suits companies that plan to consolidate their backup and recovery tools,” a Forrester Research report says. Meanwhile “Rubrik suits firms aiming to simplify, modernize, and consolidate data resiliency,” and “Cohesity addresses data sprawl challenges and helps firms leverage secondary data.”

Earlier this month Cohesity announced that it had more than doubled its valuation to $2.5 billion in a $250 million Series E funding round bringing its total funding to more than $650 million. Additionally, Rubrik last year scored a lucrative $261 million Series E funding round that pushed its valuation to $3.3 billion.