Federal Circuit Affirms Win for Akamai Invalidating Streaming Patent Claims

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday issued a precedential decision affirming a district court decision that found claims of MediaPointe, Inc.’s patents for internet streaming technology either invalid as indefinite or not infringed. The decision was authored by Judge Taranto.

Akamai Technologies, Inc. sued MediaPointe in 2022, seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement of MediaPointe’s U.S. Patent No. 8,559,426 and its child, U.S. Patent No. 9,426,195. MediaPointe counterclaimed for infringement of both patents and Akamai counterclaimed for judgment of invalidity of all claims of both patents.

During claim construction proceedings, Akamai argued that certain claim limitations reciting “best” or “optimal” routes or “best situated” nodes were indefinite, and the district court ultimately agreed. MediaPointe argued that the term “‘optimal routes’ should be construed to mean ‘a path determined to be among the most favorable under the circumstances based on one or more characteristics.” MediaPointe also said that the limitations “optimal” and “best” were not indefinite because the specification indicated how to “generate trace-route results and grounds the words ‘best’ and ‘optimal’ in the numerical, objective trace-route results, including latency, number of hops, and transmission reliability.”

The district court, however, found that “the specification ‘fails to provide a procedure or any other detail explaining how to consistently use [ ] hop[, ]latency[, and] reliability information to determine ‘optimal/best’ routes.” Furthermore, the specification contained an “expanded range of factors” with regard to “compiling an index of best performing nodes,” which “confirm[ed]…that the specification does not include bounds for the terms ‘best’ and ‘optimal,’” said the district court.

Subsequently, the district court’s claim construction order invalidated certain claims based on the indefiniteness finding and infringement proceedings continued on the remaining claims of the ‘195 patent. Although MediaPointe identified Akamai’s “Global Traffic Management” product as performing the claimed method in its final infringement contentions in June 2023, its August 2023 opening expert report identified the “Mapper” product as the “management center” that performed claim 1. This resulted in Akamai moving under Rule 37(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to strike that portion of the expert report as untimely.

Akamai also moved for summary judgment of non-infringement of the relevant claims, which the district court granted, in part because the stricken portions of MediaPointe’s expert report contained the only evidence it had that Akamai’s product met the limitation. However, the district court also held that “even with the excluded infringement theory considered, MediaPointe’s evidence failed to create a fact issue about whether Mapper meets limitation 1[a].”

On appeal to the CAFC, MediaPointe challenged the district court’s finding that certain claims were invalid for indefiniteness and also the court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement based on 1) the exclusion of the expert report and 2) insufficient evidence even when considering the evidence provided by the expert report.

With respect to the invalidity holding, the CAFC said that “[a]s a matter of ordinary syntax, the claims require considering at least, but not only, trace-route results.” The specification in fact “explicitly confirms the absence of such a restriction,” said the CAFC, noting that the specification states:

“[A]fter generating trace-route results, but before “a client is assigned a ‘best’ or ‘nearest’ node,” an intelligent distribution network operator may consider “reasons intrinsic to their own operation such as time of day or other variances” in making such assignments.”

The specification also references “‘preferred embodiments’ in which ‘best performing’ nodes’ may be determined with reference to ‘various factors’ not limited to trace-route results,” wrote the CAFC. Quoting Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., 572 U.S. 898, 910 (2014), the opinion noted that “[a] claim term, even if it refers to certain objective measures, is indefinite if it ‘might mean several different things [but] no informed and confident choice is available among the contending definitions.’” Because there are multiple methods by which the claim limitation could be met and no guidance in the specification as to which one should be used, the claim is indefinite, said the Federal Circuit.

The CAFC next found that the district court did not err in granting summary judgement of non-infringement and agreed that, even when considering the evidence provided by the excluded expert report, there was no triable issue of fact for a jury to determine. “The district court was required to give the issue before us to the jury only if ‘request for media content’ can reasonably bear MediaPointe’s relied-on meaning—a ‘user’s attempt to access media content,’” said the CAFC.

Since the claim language refers to media content being received by a management center, which is “unmistakably language about messages, which are what are sent (or entered) and received,” and not user activity, the CAFC dismissed MediaPointe’s arguments.

While MediaPointe’s argument may have “provoked a dispute over the proper construction of the ‘request for media content’ term” had it been raised before claim construction, “[t]hat it was not raised then, the matter being left to the ordinary meaning…is strong confirmation that there is no reasonable alternative in this context to understanding ‘request’ to mean a computer message, not an ‘attempt.’”

The district court’s judgment was therefore affirmed in its entirety.

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