It was recently announced that Fortinet Inc., a provider of internet security systems, obtained three U.S. patents related to its security technology. U.S. Patent No. 7,096,383, entitled “System and method for virtual router failover in a network routing system,” issued on August 22, 2006, and includes 25 system and method claims relating to a “network routing system having a control blade and a plurality of virtual routing engines.” U.S. Patent No. 7,111,072, entitled “Packet routing system and method,” issued on September 19th and includes 20 system and method claims pertaining to a “flexible, scalable hardware and software platform that allows a service provider to easily provide internet services, virtual private network services, firewall services, etc., to a plurality of customers.” U.S. Patent No. 7,116,665, entitled “Methods and systems for a distributed provider edge,” issued on October 3rd and includes 27 system and method claims for processing network traffic on a distributed Provider Edge (PE) system. Fortinet’s most recently issued patent claims a PE system comprising a PE backbone device, a Virtual Routing and Forwarding device (VRF) “associated with a single customer site and having a single routing table and forwarding table,” and a plurality of “Virtual Private Network (VPN) Routing and Protocol Modules (VRPs) residing on the VRF,” whereby each of the VRPs communicates with the routing and forwarding tables with the PE backbone device through the data place, and wherein “each VRP is associated with a single customer VPN.” According to the USPTO’s assignment records, Fortinet has 4 issued patents (the aforementioned 3 patents as well as U.S. Patent No. 6,983,792) and also has the rights to 13 additional pending published U.S. patent applications.

Yahoo! Finance Article: LINK
U.S. Patent No. 7,096,383: LINK
U.S. Patent No. 7,111,072: LINK
U.S. Patent No. 7,116,665: LINK
Fortinet Inc. Website: LINK