In an opinion of two factually similar cases, Akamai Technologies v. Limelight Networks and McKesson Technologies v. Epic Systems, consolidated as 692 F.3d 1301 (Fed. Cir. 2012), a split 6-5 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit significantly departed from prior precedent in holding that liability for induced infringement of a claimed method no longer requires all method steps to be performed by a single entity.
In both cases, the defendants instructed or divided the performance of a portion of the patented method steps among third parties, a tactic used for the specific purpose of avoiding infringement liability. The court’s newly established rule attempts to close an exploited loophole and loosen the pleading requirements to put the inducement law back in line with congressional intent.
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