Corporate Counsel: Divided Infringement After Akamai and McKesson

Intellectual Property partner Mark Baghdassarian and associate Matthew F. Abbott’s article “Divided Infringement After Akamai and McKesson” was published in the May 23, 2012 issue of Corporate Counsel. The article examines the impact of two pending en banc decisions by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where the issue is whether multiple actors should each be liable for patent infringement where they each perform some, but not all, of the elements of a claimed method. The authors write that the decisions in these cases, Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. Limelight Networks (Fed. Cir. 2010) and McKesson Technologies, Inc. v. Epic Sys. Corp. (Fed. Circ. 2011) , will significantly alter the dynamic of patent litigation in the context of divided infringement scenarios, regardless of which position the Federal Circuit adopts, and that companies should monitor this potential change in the law and how it might impact them.