Divided Infringement Steps Into The Limelight

Implications of Limelight v. Akamai

The United States Supreme Court ruled Monday that a defendant cannot be liable for inducing infringement unless the induced party directly infringed the patent. This means, under current Federal Circuit law, that there is no induced infringement of a method patent unless every step of the method can be attributed to a single actor. The unanimous ruling in Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc. reversed an en banc ruling of the Federal Circuit.

The Limelight case began when Akamai sued Limelight for infringement of a patented method for delivering internet content. Limelight argued in defense that neither Limelight nor its customers performed all of the claimed steps; Limelight performed most of the steps and instructed its customers to perform the remaining one, a step of "tagging" web content for storage.