August 9, 2002 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In the latest development in an ongoing patent battle, Cable & Wireless (CW.com) said on Thursday that it had filed a lawsuit in US District Court charging that content delivery network competitor Akamai Technologies Inc. and its affiliate Sockeye Networks Inc. infringe on an optimal-routing technology patent held by Cable & Wireless.
C&W says its US Patent 6,275,470 covers host-to-host adaptive routing protocol (HHARP), which detects Internet congestion and determines the best route between origin servers and the edge of the Internet.
“We believe Akamai’s EdgeSuite and Sockeye’s GlobalRoute products and services infringe on our HHARP patent and we will aggressively protect our intellectual property assets for the benefit of our customers and our stockholders,” said Chris Albinson, chief strategy officer for Exodus, a Cable & Wireless Service, the organization formed by the integration of Digital Island with the Exodus business.
The announcement follows a similar lawsuit filed by C&W, which charged Akamai with violating the company?s newly-issued patent covering various content-delivery algorithms and systems.
Cable & Wireless says the latest suit is another step in what it expects to be a multi-year effort to protect the company?s intellectual property and defend its status as the inventor of CDN technology.
