Dot Hill Intellectual Property and Patent Leadership Validated by ipCapital Group

LONGMONT, Colo., Feb. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL), a leading provider of Unified Virtual Storage and SAN storage solutions, today announced the findings of a report validating the strength of the company's intellectual property holdings and overall patent portfolio as compared to other storage vendors in its peer group.

In a report prepared by ipCapital Group, Inc. (ipCG), Dot Hill's patent strength was ranked No. 1 out of a peer group of 15 storage vendors.  Dot Hill's patent portfolio surpassed the storage patent portfolios of the fifteen technology peers in the group.

The average patent strength ranking was based on a set of quantitative factors that have been shown to be predictive of potential intellectual property value – such as geographic coverage, number of claims, citations, and patent age.

In the report, ipCapital Group credits Dot Hill for covering its entire business landscape with intellectual property to protect the overall business value of the company and support future growth.  Intellectual property is an extremely valuable asset for companies today.  It fuels the delivery of innovative products that meet evolving business needs and it offers revenue protection and supports margin growth, which lowers overall business risk.

"Our report is a data-driven assessment that shows Dot Hill is an IP leader with clear patent strength among key competitors," said John Cronin, managing director and chairman, ipCapital Group, Inc.  "The strength of the company's current IP portfolio is evidence that Dot Hill manages IP strategically as a core business process which can offer significant competitive advantage."

"Dot Hill has always prided itself on the caliber of its deep, in house technical expertise, which has powered our OEM and channel partners across the storage industry," said Dana Kammersgard, president and CEO, Dot Hill Systems.  "We are committed to continuing to command a leadership position in our research and development efforts, and in identifying opportunities to extract further value from our intellectual portfolio."

ipCapital Group is a Vermont-based intellectual property (IP) consulting firm that has been serving clients since 1998, including Dot Hill, that range from early stage to Fortune 500 companies.  Prior to founding ipCG, Mr. Cronin spent over seventeen years at IBM and became its top inventor with over 100 patents and 150 patent publications.  He created and ran the IBM Patent Factory which was essential to helping IBM become number one in US patents and was part of the team that contributed to the start of and success of IBM's successful licensing program.

About Dot Hill

Leveraging its proprietary Assured family of storage solutions, Dot Hill solves many of today's most challenging storage problems – helping IT to improve performance, increase availability, simplify operations, and reduce costs.  Dot Hill's solutions combine breakthrough virtualization software with the industry's most flexible and extensive hardware platform and automated management to deliver best-in-class unified virtual storage and SAN solutions.  Headquartered in Longmont, Colo., Dot Hill has offices and/or representatives in China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

For more information, visit us at www.dothill.com.

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Certain statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical fact are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.  Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements.  Forward-looking statements include the statements regarding the value of Dot Hill's patent portfolio, as well as any future effect the portfolio or the ipCapital Group report may have on Dot Hill's financial results, competitive advantage, stock price and attractiveness with respect to corporate transactions.  The risks that contribute to the uncertain nature of the forward-looking statements include: the visibility and distribution of the ipCapital Group report, which may be minimal; the actual or perceived value of Dot Hill's patent portfolio; the ability of Dot Hill to protect its patents or secure additional patents, and; unforeseen technological, intellectual property, supply or engineering issues, and changing customer preferences.  However, there are many other risks not listed here that may affect the future business of Dot Hill, as well as the forward-looking statements contained herein.  To learn about such risks and uncertainties, you should read the risk factors set forth in Dot Hill's public filings with the SEC, including the Forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q most recently filed by Dot Hill.  All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as the date on which they were made.  Dot Hill undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect later events or circumstances.  The ipCapital Group is an independent agency, and Dot Hill takes no responsibility or liability for statements made by the ipCapital Group, either within the report described in this release or otherwise.  Please note, however, that Dot Hill is a client of ipCapital Group, and Dot Hill has hired ipCapital Group to act as a consultant with respect to Dot Hill's intellectual property portfolio.

SOURCE Dot Hill Systems Corp.