CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Akamai Technologies is trying to shut down Digital Island's Footprint content delivery service as the patent fight between the two service providers continues.
The motion for an injunction, filed this week, comes shortly after a federal jury in Boston found that Digital Island's Footprint CDN infringed on one of Akamai's patents.
A spokesperson for Akamai says the motion for an injunction is aimed at Digital Island's Footprint 2.0 service, "which is their current version and which was found by the jury to be infringing on our patent." Digital Island, however, claims that its Footprint 2.0 service does not include the technology that was found to be in violation of the patent in question, number 6,108,703.
Akamai originally sued Digital Island in September 2000, claiming it violated the '703 patent that was issued to Akamai in August 2000. The patent covers technology that involves renaming URLs to join a CDN host name to a domain name and path, directing content requests to edge caching servers.
Digital Island fired back, claiming Akamai infringed on its Truename patent, which covers ways to track data to ensure the freshest information is delivered to Web sites and that duplicate information is not stored in its caches.
In December, a federal jury found that Akamai did not infringe on Digital Island's patent, but that Digital Island was infringing on Akamai's '703 patent. It is that ruling that led to this week's motion for an injunction, the Akamai spokesperson says, noting that the judge has yet to set damages in the December ruling.
"In the interim we have filed a motion for a broad injunction against Digital Island's 2.0 service," the spokesperson says. "We're looking for the judge to enjoin 2.0."
Digital Island says that it does not use the method that the judge ruled was in violation of the Akamai patent in its Footprint 2.0 service.
"There are very, very few customers that are still using the old version, and we're in the process of pulling them over," a Digital Island spokesperson says. "So by the time this motion gets ruled on it will be a moot point because we'll already have all of our customers who may have been infringing, off the old system."
In addition, Digital Island notes that the Boston jury invalidated three of Akamai's patent infringement claims.
"Given that the broadest claims of Akamai's patent were found invalid and based on the very narrow claims that the jury failed to invalidate, we don't believe that Akamai should be granted the injunction they are seeking," says Digital Island CEO and President Ruann Ernst. "Regardless, no new or current customers will be impacted by any injunction that may be issued."
Digital Island expects the judge to rule on the jury's verdict, as well as motions, including Akamai's injunction, in the next couple of months.
"And then after that, depending on what she rules on and submits, there will be appeals," the Digital Island spokesperson says. "So it's not going to end after this."
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