Opinion ID: 3154932
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: “[T]agging”

Text: In a prior litigation relating to the ’703 patent, the district court construed “tagging” as “providing a ‘pointer’ or ‘hook’ so that the object resolves to a domain other than the content provider domain.” Akamai Techs., Inc. v. Digital Island, No. 00-11851-RWZ, 2001 WL 36172136, at  (D. Mass. Nov. 8, 2001). The district court defined “to resolve to a domain other than the content provider domain” as “to specify a particular group of computers that does not include the content provider from which an optimal server is to be selected.” Id. (emphasis added). The parties accepted these constructions by stipulation in the instant case. Akamai I, 2008 WL 697707 at . This construction was not disputed during the Markman hearing, and was first challenged by Limelight in attempting to re-craft the construction for the jury instructions. Limelight argues that: 1) in the context of the ’703 patent, “tagging” is necessarily limited to using a “pointer” or “hook” that either prepends or inserts a virtual server hostname into the URL because the ’703 patent discloses no other way to “tag” to achieve the goals of the invention; and 2) that “alphanumeric string” as used in the ’645 patent (and which this court has construed to necessarily include prepending or inserting a virtual server hostname in the URL) is the product of tagging in the ’703 patent, which necessarily means that the ’703 patent incorporates the same limitations as the ’645 patent. Akamai counters that: 1) Limelight waived the argument by failing to assert it during Markman and again failing to assert it after the jury instructions were read; 2) the stipulation to which Limelight agreed was made without further limita- 10 AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC. tion of the types of “hook” or “pointer” to use, and is thus binding on Limelight; 3) “tagging” in the ’703 patent is not equivalent to “alphanumeric string” in the ’645 patent; 4) certain claims in the ’703 patent specifically require prepending while others don’t, and claim differentiation requires that the broader term “tagging” thus not be limited to prepending; 5) prepending is merely a preferred embodiment and Limelight is improperly attempting to limit the claim scope to a preferred embodiment; and 6) Limelight argued that the asserted claims lacked written description because the specification taught that the only way to tag was to prepend a virtual hostname into an existing URL – but the jury rejected this argument. Limelight’s attempt to import a “prepending” limitation into the claims fails. “[O]ur cases recognize that the specification may reveal a special definition given to a claim term by the patentee that differs from the meaning it would otherwise possess. In such cases, the inventor’s lexicography governs.” Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc). However, a claim term is only given a special definition different from the term’s plain and ordinary meaning if the “patentee . . . clearly set[s] forth a definition of the disputed claim term other than its plain and ordinary meaning.” Thorner v. Sony Comput. Entm’t Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (citations omitted). A patentee can also disavow claim scope, but the standard “is similarly exacting.” Id. at 1366. “[C]laims are not necessarily and not usually limited in scope simply to the preferred embodiment.” RF Del. v. Pac. Keystone Techs., Inc., 326 F.3d 1255, 1263 (Fed. Cir. 2003). The ’703 patent describes prepending as a “pre- fer[ence].” ’703 patent, col.4 ll.2–3. Figure 4 describes “prepend[ing a] virtual server host name,” but the patent likewise describes Figure 4 as showing the “preferred” method. Id. at col.6 ll.44–45. The patent’s reference to AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC. 11 preferred embodiments where the virtual server hostname is prepended does not provide the clarity necessary to find that the patentees intended to limit the term tagging to the preferred embodiment. Moreover, claim 17 of the ’703 patent expressly recites “tagging . . . by prepending,” suggesting that the term “tagging”—without modification and as recited in the asserted claims—is not so limited. See Ancora Techs., Inc. v. Apple, Inc., 744 F.3d 732, 735 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (explaining that using the phrase “application software program” in one claim, and “program” alone in another “tends to reinforce . . . adoption of the broad ordinary meaning of ‘program’ by itself”). The prosecution history cited by Limelight also fails to provide the necessary clarity to limit “tagging” to the preferred embodiment. During prosecution, Akamai amended what is now claim 17 to require tagging “by prepending” and amended claim 19 to require that the content provider “serv[e] the given page” and that the Content Delivery Network serve the embedded image. In their remarks, the applicants stated that “the embedded object URL is modified . . . to prepend given data to the domain name and path normally used to retrieve the embedded object.” In view of the amendment now requiring claim 17 to tag “by prepending,” a person of skill in the art could reasonably understand the applicants’ description of prepending the data as referring only to claim 17. This statement therefore does not provide the necessary clarity required for disavowal in claim 19. Limelight claims that the only method of tagging described in the ’703 patent involves prepending a virtual server hostname. However, as this court has held, “even where a patent describes only a single embodiment, claims will not be read restrictively unless the patentee has demonstrated a clear intention to limit the claim scope using words or expressions of manifest exclusion or restriction.” Innova/Pure Water, Inc. v. Safari Water Filtration Sys., 381 F.3d 1111, 1117 (Fed. Cir. 2004) 12 AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC. (internal citations omitted). As explained above, no such indication of exclusion appears in the patent specification or prosecution history. We note that the district court read to the jury the construction of “tagging” to which Limelight stipulated. Though Limelight points to O2 Micro International Ltd. v. Beyond Innovation Technology Co., 521 F.3d 1351, 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2008), for the proposition that its stipulation did not “give up any right to argue that further construction or interpretation of tagging would be needed,” that case is inapposite. In O2 Micro, the Court was clearly aware of the parties’ disagreement about the claim term “only if,” and the Court refused to construe it beyond its ordinary meaning. Id. at 1357 (“The parties agreed, for the most part, that a previously issued claim construction order . . . controlled in this case. . . . However, the parties presented a handful of additional terms for the court to construe [of which “only if” was one].”); id. at 1361 (“The parties presented a dispute to the district court regarding the scope of the asserted claims.”). See also id. at 1361 (“[T]he parties disputed not the meaning of the words themselves, but the scope that should be encompassed by this claim language.” (emphasis in original)). Here, the parties agreed in the stipulation as to both the meaning and the scope of the term during claim construction: “tagging” means “providing a ‘pointer’ or ‘hook’ so that the object resolves to a domain other than the content provider domain.” This meaning was agreed-upon with no further limitations. The lack of further limitations was itself a characteristic of the construction to which both parties agreed. Limelight cannot argue at the jury instruction stage – after the bulk of the trial was framed and directed by the Markman construction to which it agreed – that the construction was somehow too broad. Limelight stipulated to a construction of “tagging,” and it is bound by that stipulation. AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC. v. LIMELIGHT NETWORKS, INC. 13 We find no error in the district court’s claim construction of “tagging” or the jury instruction pursuant thereto. The parties do not assert that there is any remaining issue of fact as to whether Limelight performs “tagging” (apart from the “optimal server” issue addressed below).