August 23, 2002 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Communications company Cable & Wireless responded today to a permanent injunction issued Friday by a US District Court judge against the company for infringing on a patent held by content delivery network provider Akamai.
Cable & Wireless customers of the C&W business formerly known as Digital Island would not be affected by the injunction, which applies to a content delivery network product that has not been sold or used for the past eight months.
“The injunction ruling has no affect on our customers. It is a legal technicality about a legacy part of our CDN service that was abandoned eight months ago,” says Chris Albinson, chief strategy officer for Exodus, a Cable & Wireless Service, the organization created by the integration of Digital Island and Exodus.
C&W says that last December, a federal jury issued a verdict invalidating key claims of US Patent 6,108,703, which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology licenses to Akamai as the basis for its content delivery products. The company says the same verdict found four minor claims were infringed upon, and Digital Island remedied the situation by modifying its product.
