Supreme Court Decision Alert - June 2, 2014

Today (June 2, 2014) the Supreme Court issued two decisions, described below, of interest to the business community.

Patent Act—Inducing Infringement

Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Techs., Inc., No. 12-786 (described in the January 13, 2014, Docket Report)

Section 271(b) of the Patent Act imposes liability on a party who "actively induces infringement of a patent." 35 U.S.C. § 271(b). Today, the Supreme Court held that a claim for induced infringement is unavailable unless some single person or entity has directly infringed the patent—which, for a method patent, means that one party must have performed all the claimed steps.

Akamai Technologies, Inc., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sued Limelight Networks, Inc., for patent infringement based on Limelight's operation of a "content delivery network" that delivers electronic data to Internet users. Akamai and MIT alleged that Limelight carried out several steps of a claimed method patent but