Federal Circuit Grants En Banc Rehearing to Address Joint Infringement
As we noted here, Judges Bryson and Newman forecasted in the McKesson Tech’s. v. Epic Systems decision issued last week that the full Federal Circuit would have to resolve whether a method claim was directly infringed where the steps of the claim are performed by separate actors who are not under the other’s direction or control.
Sure enough, yesterday the Court granted rehearing en banc in Akamai Technologies v. Limelight Networks, No. 2009-1372 (Fed. Cir. 2011) to address that issue. (en banc order here).
In its order granting rehearing en banc, the Court ordered the parties to address the following question: “If separate entities each perform separate steps of a method claim, under what circumstances would that claim be directly infringed and to what extent would each of the parties be liable?”
Our earlier post discussing the Akamai decision in detail can be found here.
