Divided Infringement Challenges For Personalized Medicine

On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last month held in Akamai Tech. Inc. v. Limelight Networks Inc. that "direct infringement liability of a method claim under 35 U.S.C. Section 271(a) exists when all of the steps of the claim are performed by or attributed to a single entity." In addition, the Federal Circuit ruled that direct infringement can be found in a multi-party situation that involves "a principal-agent relationship, a contractual relationship or in circumstances in which parties work together in a joint enterprise functioning as a form of mutual agency." However, the Federal Circuit did not specifically address the scope of "joint enterprise" liability, as not being before it given the facts of the case.