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

Posted by timothy on 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."

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Infringe all the patents! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Doesn't this mean that any software system with an API could be potentially infringing on every software patent ever filed?

    1. Re:Infringe all the patents! by BSAtHome · · 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...

  2. Re:Patent infringement by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They don't have much in common except that they both go under the dubious umbrella of "intellectual property".

    "Intellectual property" is a term that was entirely made up for use as propaganda by rights-holders. It is actually a contradiction in terms, because there is no "property" at all involved in copyrights and patents, just time-limited privileges granted by government. But they have wanted you to THINK in terms of it being their "property". That makes you more amenable to distortions of the policies and laws.

    It's the same basic idea as calling downloading "piracy", when it isn't. (Copyright piracy actually has a legal definition that hasn't really changed in about 100 years.) Downloading is not a crime. Piracy is. But Big Media wants you to think of them as the same. They can get away with more that way.