According to the Company’s FORM 10-Q for the quarterly period ended April 29, 2006, in June 2004, a stipulation of settlement for the claims against the issuer defendants, including the Company, was submitted to the Court for approval. On August 31, 2005, the Court granted preliminary approval of the settlement. On April 24, 2006, the Court held a fairness hearing in connection with the motion for final approval of the settlement. The Court did not issue a ruling on the motion for final approval at the fairness hearing. The settlement remains subject to a number of conditions, including final approval by the Court.

As summarized by the same SEC filing, on July 20, 2001, the first of a number of putative class actions for violations of the federal securities laws was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Company, certain of its officers and directors, and certain of the underwriters for the Company’s initial public offering of securities. A consolidated amended class action captioned In Re Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation was filed on April 19, 2002. The complaint generally alleges that various underwriters engaged in improper and undisclosed activities related to the allocation of shares in the Company’s initial public offering and seeks unspecified damages on behalf of a purported class of purchasers of common stock from May 24, 1999 to December 6, 2000. The lawsuit against the Company is being coordinated for pretrial proceedings with a number of other pending litigations challenging underwriter practices in over 300 cases as In Re Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation, 21 MC 92(SAS). In October 2002, the individual defendants were dismissed without prejudice from the action, pursuant to a tolling agreement. On February 19, 2003, the Court issued an Opinion and Order dismissing all of the plaintiffs’ claims against the Company.

The complaint alleges that defendants violated the federal securities laws by issuing and selling Brocade common stock pursuant to the May 24, 1999 IPO without disclosing to investors that some of the underwriters in the offering, including the lead underwriters, had solicited and received excessive and undisclosed commissions from certain investors. The complaint alleges that, in exchange for the excessive commissions, members of the underwriting group allocated Brocade shares to customers at the IPO price of $19 per share. To receive the allocations (i.e., the ability to purchase shares) at $19, the underwriters' brokerage customers had to agree to purchase additional shares in the aftermarket at progressively higher prices. The requirement that customers make additional purchases at progressively higher prices as the price of Brocade stock rocketed upward (a practice known on Wall Street as ``laddering'') was intended to (and did) drive Brocade's share price up to artificially high levels. This artificial price inflation, the complaint alleges, enabled both the underwriters and their customers to reap enormous profits by buying stock at the $19 IPO price and then selling it later for a profit at inflated aftermarket prices, which rose as high as $45.25 on May 25, 1999, more than doubling on its first day of trading. The complaint further alleges that defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933 because the Prospectus distributed to investors and the Registration Statement filed with the SEC in order to gain regulatory approval for the Brocade offering contained material misstatements regarding the commissions that the underwriters would derive from the IPO transaction and failed to disclose the additional commissions and ``laddering'' scheme discussed above.