Akamai Technologies v. Limelight Networks
| Decision Date | 24 April 2009 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 06-11109-RWZ. |
| Citation | 614 F.Supp.2d 90 |
| Parties | AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC., et al. v. LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts |
Carlos J. Perez-Albuerne, Richard C. Abati, Robert S. Frank, Jr., Emma Drummond Becker, G. Mark Edgarton, Jessica Gan Lee, Robert M. Buchanan, Jr., Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP, Sarah Chapin Columbia, McDermott, Will & Emery LLP, Elizabeth Page Wilkins, Lurie & Krupp, LLP, Boston, MA, for Plaintiffs.
Alexander F. Mackinnon, Allison Worthy Buchner, Amber T. Aubry, Christopher C. Smith, David Shukan, Marc H. Cohen, Nick Saros, Robert G. Krupka, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Los Angeles, CA, Regan A. Smith, Courtney Holohan, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Chicago, IL, Gael Mahony Holland & Knight, LLP, Providence, RI, Anthony L. Deprospo, Jr., Edward S. Cheng, Sherin and Lodgen LLP, Thomas M. Johnston, Holland & Knight, Boston, MA, for Defendants.
Introduction ...................................................................... 95
Background and Procedural History ................................................. 96
Content Delivery Service Providers ............................................ 96
Operation of the Parties' Content Delivery Services ........................... 96
Akamai's '703 Patent .......................................................... 97
The Farber '598 Patent ........................................................ 98
Sandpiper's Footprint System .................................................. 98
The Digital Island and Speedera Patent Infringement Lawsuits .................. 99
The Instant Lawsuit ........................................................... 100
Discussion ........................................................................ 100
Inequitable Conduct During Prosecution of the '703 Patent ..................... 100
The Legal Standard for Inequitable Conduct ................................ 101
Materiality ........................................................... 101
Intent ................................................................ 101
Evidentiary Rulings ....................................................... 101
DX1209—Sandpiper Web Site Images ................................ 101
PX1004A—Limelight's Markman Brief in the Level 3 Lawsuit ........ 103
DX1228—Leighton's Testimony in the Digital Island Trial ......... 104
The Allegedly Withheld Information ........................................ 104
Materiality ........................................................... 104
Intent ................................................................ 108
Limelight's Defenses of Laches and Equitable Estoppel ......................... 110
Legal Standard ............................................................ 110
Laches ................................................................ 110
Equitable Estoppel .................................................... 111
Factual Background ........................................................ 111
Discussion ................................................................ 113
Laches ................................................................ 113
Equitable Estoppel .................................................... 115
Unclean Hands ................................................................. 116
Limelight's Motion for Reconsideration ........................................ 116
BMC Resources .................................................... 117
The Jury Instructions in the Instant Case ................................. 118
Muniauction ...................................................... 119
Vicarious Liability .................................................... 119
The Significance of Muniauction ........................................ 120
Conclusion ........................................................................ 123
Defendant Limelight Networks, Inc. ("Limelight") seeks relief from a jury finding of patent infringement and an award of $45.5 million in damages to plaintiffs Akamai Technologies, Inc., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (hereinafter the singular "Akamai") based on the defenses of inequitable conduct, laches, equitable estoppel and unclean hands. It also moves for reconsideration of my earlier denial of its motion for judgment as a matter of law ("JMOL"). After careful consideration of the evidence presented at the November 2008 bench trial and the arguments in the parties' papers, I hold that Limelight has failed to prove that Akamai's conduct was so egregious that its patent rights should not be enforced. However, based on a clarification in the standard for a finding of joint infringement articulated by the Federal Circuit after the jury trial, Limelight is entitled to JMOL on the issue of infringement.
Both Akamai and Limelight provide Internet content delivery services to their customers, content providers who maintain, inter alia, news and entertainment web sites that supply content to end users' web browsers. Without such a service, a content provider must distribute all its content from its own web servers. This requires the content provider to purchase and maintain servers and telecommunications bandwidth to handle the worst case load, and even then it may be overwhelmed by an unanticipated event, such as a major national disaster, or even a planned event which draws a large number of viewers, such as the Super Bowl. In addition, end users located far from the content provider's servers may experience poor performance due to Internet delays and congestion.
Content service providers Akamai and Limelight both maintain their own content delivery network ("CDN") consisting of hundreds or thousands of servers located in multiple locations across the United States and around the world. Once a content provider has contracted for content delivery services, a portion of its web content, typically large data files such as images, video and/or sound, is supplied by the CDN from a server located close to the end user rather than from the content provider's servers. Because a content delivery service aggregates the data demands of multiple content providers with differing peak usage patterns and serves that content from multiple servers in multiple locations, it is less likely to slow down or fail when an event creates a high demand for particular content. In addition, since content is supplied from a server close to the end user, that content is less likely to be affected by Internet congestion or breakdowns. The result is that the content provider can obtain the capacity to service its end users under worst case demand conditions without having to pay for capacity that is idle much of the time.
A web page typically consists of text interspersed with various types of content such as images, video and sound, which are referred to as page objects. The web page, as well as the page objects, are stored on the content provider's web server. The page objects are normally not included within the web page itself, rather the web page consists of only the text on the page along with links (i.e. an Internet address) pointing to the page objects. Upon receiving a request for a web page, the content provider's web server returns the web page containing these links to the end user's web browser. The end user's web browser then uses these links to request each page object from the content provider's server until all the objects have been retrieved and the web page fully rendered.
To utilize Akamai's or Limelight's content delivery service, the content provider modifies its web pages so that the links, or URLs,1 to the page objects point to the content service provider's servers, not its own.2 The end user's browser fetches the initial web page from the content provider's server and then uses the returned links to request the other objects on the page from the content service provider's servers. The content delivery service provider replicates these page objects on some or all of its servers and directs the end user's request for an object to an appropriate server. Thus, only the initial page is supplied by the content provider; the remaining page objects are served by the content delivery service provider's web servers. Because the initial page supplied by the content provider is relatively small compared to the size of the page objects, the majority of the information on the page is served by the content delivery service provider.
On July 14, 1998, Akamai filed a provisional application for what would become the '703 patent. The disclosures in this patent form the basis for Akamai's Free-Flow content delivery service. The utility application was filed on May 19, 1999,4 and Akamai filed a petition to make special ("PTMS") with the Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO") in September 1999 to expedite the examination of its application. See 37 C.F.R. § 1.102 (1999). The PTO allowed the PTMS the following month, then, after a single office action in February 2000, allowed the application in April 2000. The patent issued on August 22, 2000.
The '703 patent claims systems and methods for replicating page objects among a distributed set of content delivery service provider servers and redirecting end user requests for those objects to a particular content server. The specification describes, inter alia, a modification to the Internet's address lookup...
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