August 9, 2002
(IDG News Service)
Cable & Wireless PLC (C&W) has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco accusing Akamai Technologies Inc. of infringing a patent relating to optimal-routing technology. The suit is the second patent infringement lawsuit C&W has filed against Akamai in two months.
C&W, a London-based telecommunication services company, is seeking to defend its patent covering what C&W calls its host-to-host adaptive routing protocol (HHARP). The technology is used to detect Internet congestion and determine the best route between a customer's origin servers and the edge of the Internet for the quickest delivery of data, the company said in a statement yesterday.
C&W also named Akamai affiliate Sockeye Networks Inc. in Waltham, Mass., as a co-defendant in the suit.
The suit asserts that Akamai's EdgeSuite and Sockeye's GlobalRoute products and services infringe on the HHARP patent, C&W said.
A spokesman for Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai said the content-delivery network provider is aware of the lawsuit and considers the claims to be totally without merit.
"We believe that C&W is again acting to divert attention from an upcoming permanent injunction, the final wording of which is expected to be issued later this summer. In that case, a jury found in December 2001 that the Cable & Wireless' Footprint content delivery service infringes Akamai patent rights," said company spokesman Jeff Young.
Footprint content delivery service is now operated under the Exodus brand as part of C&W, though in December 2001 it was operated by Digital Island Inc. which has since become a part of Exodus.
Representatives from C&W couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Last month, C&W sued Akamai in federal court in Boston accusing the company of infringing on a patent that covers various content-delivery algorithms and systems. The patent itself was also issued in July. The lawsuit claims that Akamai's EdgeSuite content-delivery networks (CDN) product and Akamaizer tool, which prepares content to be accessed by the CDN, violates C&W's patent.
Akamai and C&W share a long history of issuing patent infringement suits against each other. Akamai has sued the C&W for infringing on two of its CDN-related patents.
C&W expects to engage in a "multiyear effort" against Akamai and other companies to defend its status as the first inventor of CDN technology, the company said.