Supreme Court overturns Limelight and Nautilus cases
The US Supreme Court has today overturned rulings in two patent cases that could provide guidance for future infringement lawsuits and limit the power of non-practising entities (NPEs), sometimes known as “patent trolls”.
The court was deciding on the Limelight Networks v Akamai Technologies and Nautilus Inc, v Biosig Instruments cases.
In both cases, previous rulings that found Limelight and Nautilus liable for infringement were thrown out.
The Limelight case centred on whether a defendant could be held liable for patent infringement even if multiple parties had performed different steps of the infringement.
Supreme Court Justices ruled in a 9-0 unanimous judgement that Limelight could not be held responsible for infringing Akamai’s patent for technology used to manage web images and video.
The decision comes after a judgment from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a District Court decision and said Limelight may be held liable for inducing infringement even though “no one party” had committed direct infringement.
Limelight, an internet content delivery company, had been accused by its rival of using its patented technology, then encouraging customers to carry out the remaining infringing acts.
But Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said all the steps for patent infringement must be performed by a single party.
The case drew interest from technology companies including Google and Oracle, which previously encouraged the court to rule in favour of Limelight in order to limit the growing number of patent infringement lawsuits.
Also today, the court threw out claims that Nautilus infringed a patent belonging to Biosig that is built into fitness machines and used to monitor a user's heartbeat.
The Supreme Court said the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled in favour of Biosig, had set the bar too low in allowing patents to be written vaguely.
The court rejected the Federal Circuit’s previous definition that a patent claim passes the threshold as long as it is “amenable to construction” and not “insolubly ambiguous”.
It is thought the judgment could have wide implications for NPEs, which have been accused of filing lawsuits or demanding licensing fees on weak patents.
The Supreme Court did not rule on the validity of the patent but instead referred it back to the Federal Circuit to decide based on its ruling.
