Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc.

• Decision Date: 20 April 2011
• Docket Number: Nos. 2009-1417,Nos. 2009-1416,Nos. 2009-1380,Nos. 2009-1372,s. 2009-1372,s. 2009-1380,s. 2009-1416,s. 2009-1417
• Citation: 97 U.S.P.Q.2d 1321,629 F.3d 1311
• Parties: AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC., Defendant-Cross-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

629 F.3d 1311

97 U.S.P.Q.2d 1321

AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant,

and

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC., Defendant-Cross-Appellant.

Nos. 2009-1372, 2009-1380, 2009-1416, 2009-1417.

United States Court of Appeals,Federal Circuit.

Dec. 20, 2010.

Rehearing Denied April 20, 2011.

Donald R. Dunner, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner,LLP, of Washington, DC, argued for all plaintiffs-appellants. With him on the brief were Kara F. Stoll and Elizabeth D. Ferrill. Of counsel on the brief was Robert S. Frank, Jr., Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP, of Boston, MA, for The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Of counsel were G. Mark Edgarton and Carlos Perez-Albuerne.

Alexander F. Mackinnon, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, of Los Angeles, CA, argued for defendant-cross appellant. With him on the brief were Robert G. Krupka, and Nick G. Saros. Of counsel on the brief was Dion Messer, Limelight Networks, Inc., of Tempe, AZ.

Before RADER, Chief Judge, LINN and PROST, Circuit Judges.

LINN, Circuit Judge.

Akamai Technologies, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively, "Akamai") appeal the district court's judgment as a matter of law ("JMOL") overturning a jury verdict of infringement by Limelight Networks, Inc. ("Limelight") of claims 19-21 and 34 of U.S. Patent No. 6,108,703 (the "'703 patent"). See Akamai Techs., Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc., 614 F.Supp.2d 90 (D.Mass.2009) (" JMOL Opinion "). Akamai also appeals the district court's construction of claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 7,103,645 (the "'645 patent") and claims 8, 18, and 20 of U.S. Patent No. 6,553,413 (the "'413 patent"). Limelight cross appeals the district court's denial of JMOL relating to the jury's award of lost profits. See Akamai Techs., Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc., Nos.2009-1372, -1380, -1416, -1417, 2010 WL 331770 (Fed.Cir. Jan.27, 2010) (finding Limelight's cross appeal in this case proper as to the lost profits determination).

Because Limelight did not perform all of the steps of the asserted method claims, and the record contains no basis on which to attribute to Limelight the actions of its customers who carried out the other steps, this court affirms the finding of noninfringement and does not reach Limelight's cross-appeal regarding damages. This court also affirms the district court's judgment of noninfringement of the '645 and '413 patents based on its rulings on claim construction.

Background

I. The Technology and the Nature of the Dispute

Information is typically delivered over the Internet from websites. Websites are collections of documents written using a standard page description language known as Hypertext Markup Language ("HTML"). Each web page is a separate HTML file with an identifying string of characters known as a Uniform Resource Locator ("URL"). Typically, a full URL (e.g., "http:// www. cafc. uscourts. gov/ forms") consists of several elements: a protocol (e.g., "http://"); a domain name (also referred to herein as a "hostname") (e.g., "www. cafc. uscourts. gov"); and sometimes a path (e.g., "/forms"). A typical web page consists of a base HTML document that includes text interspersed with various types of content such as images, video, and sound—referred to as objects. Most of these objects are not incorporated into the web page in their entirety, but instead are simply included as links, in the form of separate URLs, which reference the actual object stored elsewhere on the same computer or another computer in the same domain (a group of networked computers that share a common domain name). These objects are referred to in the patentsas "embedded objects." An embedded object's URL is typically the same as that of the web page containing the embedded object, with the object's name appended thereto (e.g., "http:// www. cafc. uscourts. gov/ forms/ pic. jpg").

The Internet maintains a Domain Name System ("DNS"), which uses computers, known as domain name servers ("DNS servers"), to convert the hostname of a URL into a numeric Internet Protocol ("IP") address, which identifies one or more computers that store content ("content servers"). This conversion process is referred to as "resolving." A user requesting a web page using a web browser (e.g., Netscape Navigator® or Microsoft Internet Explorer®) will receive an IP address from a local DNS server that corresponds to the content server for the requested web page. In response, the user's computer sends a request for the web page directly to that content server using the IP address. The content server sends the requested web page—the base HTML document and any embedded objects' URLs—to the user's computer. The user's web browser then requests each embedded object from the content provider's server using that object's URL in the same manner that it requested the web page until all of the objects have been retrieved and the web page is fully displayed on the user's computer.

This process of retrieving web content can be slow and unreliable. For example, Internet congestion problems may occur when a single content server receives many simultaneous requests for the same web page—sometimes referred to as "flash crowds." In addition, users may experience poor content delivery performance when the user's computer is located far away from the content server it is accessing. One known solution to these content delivery problems is called mirroring, in which an entire website is replicated on multiple servers in different locations. Mirroring, however, has scalability problems, including costs required by the multiple hosting facilities, additional overhead associated with keeping mirror sites synchronized, and a ceiling on the number of website copies that may be maintained concurrently. '703 patent col.1 ll.34-61.¹ In response to these known problems with delivering content, Akamai sought to provide a scalable solution that could efficiently deliver large amounts of web content and handle flash crowds. Akamai obtained the three patents at issue, which all share the same specification and disclose a system for allowing a content provider to outsource the storage and delivery of discrete portions of its website content.

All three patents include method claims directed to a content delivery service that delivers the base document of a web site from a content provider's computer while individual embedded objects of the website are stored on an object-by-object basis on a Content Delivery Network ("CDN"). CDNs are systems of computers strategically placed at various geographical locations to maximize the efficient delivery of information over the Internet to users accessing the network. The embedded objects are stored on and served from the CDN's "hosting" or "ghost" servers. Instead of maintaining identical copies of the entire web site content at a single location or at multiple locations by mirroring as taught by the prior art, only embedded objects are replicated on and served froma CDN. To allow users accessing a content provider's web page to receive embedded objects from a CDN, the URL of the embedded object must point to a CDN hosting or ghost server instead of to a computer within the content provider's domain. To this end, the specification of the patents describes modifying the embedded object's URL, "to condition the URL to be served by the global hosting servers." '703 patent col.6 ll.41-46. This process of modifying an embedded object's URL to link to an object on the CDN is referred to as "tagging."

Akamai and Limelight operate and compete in the market for CDN services. Limelight's accused service delivers content providers' embedded objects from its CDN. According to Limelight's contracts with its content provider customers, to use Limelight's CDN service, the content provider must perform several steps. First, the content provider must choose which embedded objects, if any, it would like to be served from Limelight's CDN. The content provider must then tag the URL of each chosen object as instructed by Limelight. Limelight then replicates the properly tagged objects on some or all of its servers and directs a user's request for one of these objects to an appropriate Limelight server.

II. Proceedings Before the District Court

On June 23, 2006, Akamai sued Limelight in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts asserting infringement of the '645, ' 703, and '413 patents. After a trial on infringement of independent claims 19 and 34 and dependent claims 20-21 of the '703 patent, a jury returned a verdict of infringement and awarded $40.1 million in lost profits and $1.4 million in reasonable royalty damages. The two independent claims asserted at trial cover methods that require tagging at least some embedded objects in a content provider's web page so that requests for those objects resolve to a domain name other than the content provider's domain name. Claim 19 also requires serving the requested web page from the content provider's domain. Claims 19 and 34 read as follows, with steps at the heart of this dispute emphasized:

19. A content delivery service, comprising:

replicating a set of page objects across a wide area network of content servers managed by a domain other than a content provider domain;

for a given page normally served from the content provider domain, tagging the embedded objects of the page so that requests for the page objects resolve to the domain instead of the content provider domain;

responsive to a request for the given page received at the content provider domain, serving the given page from the content provider domain; and

serving at least one embedded object of the given page from a given content server in the domain instead of from the content provider domain.

'703 patent col.19 ll.6-20.

34. A content delivery method, comprising:

distributing a set of page objects across a network of content servers managed by a domain other than a content

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