Dec, 2001 : Akamai Wins Digital Island Patent Litigation

📅 December 24, 2001 - An eight-person jury in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts returned a verdict today that Digital Island, Inc. (digitalisland.com) is infringing a patent asserted by Akamai Technologies, Inc. (akamai.com). The same jury also found that Akamai is not infringing a patent owned by Digital Island.

The verdict, which came at the end of a two-week trial in Boston, was theresult of lawsuits filed by the companies last year. Akamai had sued DigitalIsland for infringing two Internet content delivery patents. The patentsasserted by Akamai in the suit are U.S. patent 6,108,703 issued in the nameof Akamai founders, Tom Leighton and the late Danny Lewin, and U.S. patent6,003,030 owned by Akamai. The jury found Digital Island infringes the '703patent, but not the '030 patent.
Digital Island had countersued Akamai for infringing Digital Island's U.S.patent 5,987,791, and the jury found Akamai does not infringe that patent.
A news release by Digital Island says the jury found that the company is thefirst inventor of Internet content delivery network technology. However,certain legacy aspects of Digital Island's Footprint Version 1.0 cachingservice infringe on minor aspects of Akamai's '703 patent.
"Our customers will not be affected by the jury's verdict," said DigitalIsland CEO and president, Ruann F. Ernst. "Our customers have come to dependon our fast, secure, guaranteed and global service offerings and thoseservices will continue without interruption."