Kaspersky attempt to overturn government ban dismissed by US courts

Doesn't have leg to stand on, suggests Judge, as she tosses out two Kaspersky lawsuits

Kaspersky Lab's attempts to have the US government ban on its products overturned have been dismissed by a US judge.

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly - the same judge who presided over the original Apple versus Samsung intellectual property infringement case back in 2012 and 2013 - ruled that the ban, which comes into effect on 1 October, was constitutional, noting that the government's actions don't determine guilt and inflict punishment.

"The NDAA does not inflict 'punishment' on Kaspersky Lab," wrote Kollar-Kotelly. "It eliminates a perceived risk to the nation's cybersecurity and, in so doing, has the secondary effect of foreclosing one small source of revenue for a large multinational corporation."

She added that the company's claim that it has a "right to sell to the government" is "worthless", because "to 'sell' requires another to 'buy'" and "because no government agency would buy Plaintiff's product in the period before October 1, 2018, Plantiffs' theoretical 'right' to sell has no value at all in the real world."

Kaspersky said in a statement that it was "disappointed" with the court's decisions and said it will "vigorously pursue our appeal rights".

The statement continued: "Kaspersky Lab maintains that these actions were the product of unconstitutional agency and legislative processes and unfairly targeted the company without any meaningful fact-finding.

"Given the lack of evidence of wrongdoing by the company and the imputation of malicious cyber activity by nation-states to a private company, these decisions have broad implications for the global technology community.

"Policy prohibiting the US government's use of Kaspersky Lab products and services actually undermines the government's expressed goal of protecting federal systems from the most serious cyber threats."

Kaspersky's legal action comes after the US government ordered the removal of all Kaspersky software from federal agencies over fears that it could be used by Russia's security services to remotely monitor the PCs of users in sensitive government organisations. However, it has offered little concrete evidence to back up these claims.

That was followed in December by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which banned the use of Kaspersky Lab products within US government organisations.

Kaspersky co-founder Eugene Kaspersky has vehemently denied that the company has become ‘too close' to the Russian government and security services, but has responded with plans for independent code audits and the establishment of a data centre in Switzerland for most non-Russian customers.