Appeals Court: You Can Infringe a Patent Even If You Didn't Do All the Steps

Posted by timothy on Saturday September 1, 2012 @07:10AM from the but-my-cousin-did-the-actual-assaultin'-yer-honor dept.

reebmmm writes "In a much anticipated patent law case, an en banc panel of the Federal Circuit overturned existing law and came out in favor a new rule for indirect infringement: you can still be liable for infringing even if no single person does all the infringement. This case consolidated two different cases involving internet patents. In McKesson v. Epic, a lower court found that Epic did not infringe a patent about a patient portal because one of the steps was performed by the patient accessing the portal. In Akamai v. Limelight, the lower court found that Limelight did not infringe because its customers, not the company itself, tagged content. This is likely headed for the Supreme Court."

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Re:Infringe all the patents! by BSAtHome · 2012-09-01 07:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

Basically, if you work around a patent's claim by ommiting step(s), but the user(s) are able to perform these ommitted steps, then you are liable.
This means that a whole new area of induced infringement opens and I'm sure some companies are taking note how to extract more protection money from this.
The bar is now lowered to a level where a chain of events can make you liable whether intended or not. It monopelizes not only the patented claims but the whole field of operation.
Just wow...