US 7240100

I'll run several targeted searches for this specific patent number and for any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me check for reexamination history, litigation, and any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

Search summary — scope and what I actually found

I ran searches against the patent text (Google Patents, the authoritative source supplied), Espacenet bibliographic records, uspto.report's grant record, and open litigation/patent-portal datasets. Two of my queries came back with zero results, including my targeted query for a CAFC 2026 docket referencing "7240100." I have no authoritative evidence of any 2026 Federal Circuit activity involving this patent, and I will not speculate about one. Details and caveats are in the last section.

Bibliographic summary — US 7,240,100

Abstract (verbatim): "To serve content through a content delivery network (CDN), the CDN must have some information about the identity, characteristics and state of its target objects. Such additional information is provided in the form of object metadata, which according to the invention can be located in the request string itself, in the response headers from the origin server, in a metadata configuration file distributed to CDN servers, or in a per-customer metadata configuration file. CDN content servers execute a request identification and parsing process to locate object metadata and to handle the request in accordance therewith. Where different types of metadata exist for a particular object, metadata in a configuration file is overridden by metadata in a response header or request string, with metadata in the request string taking precedence."

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7240100/en

Independent claims — plain language

The record I retrieved (uspto.report grant page, https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7240100) shows three independent claims: 1, 10, and 15, with dependent claims 2–9 and 11–18. In plain terms:

Claim 1 — CDN content delivery using host-header-associated content controls. The CDN (run by a CDN service provider, with content servers plus a DNS) works on behalf of participating content providers. The steps:

• Alias the customer's domain/subdomain to a CDN-managed domain, so that when an end user's DNS query goes to the customer's domain, it is the CDN's DNS that resolves it (a "delegation/CNAME" arrangement).
• Specify a "content control" for a given piece of content before it is served, where the control is any one of: (i) whether/how long to cache it, (ii) the domain of a server from which an instance can be retrieved (origin server), (iii) data associating the content with a particular content provider for accounting/billing, or (iv) data enforcing an authentication or access-control method.
• Communicate that control to the CDN's content servers.
• Resolve the DNS query to the IP address of a given CDN content server using the CDN-managed domain in lieu of the customer domain.
• At that server: receive the request (which contains a host header), determine whether a string in the host header is associated with a content control stored at that server, and — if the provider specified one — apply the control before serving the content.

Claim 10 — Same framework, DNS canonical-name form, "security mechanism" variant. Substantively parallel to claim 1, but the domain association is recited as aliasing the content provider's domain to the CDN-managed domain (the dependent claim 14 specifies a DNS CNAME), the customer domain is noted as being part of the published URL, and the fourth alternative control is recited more broadly as data that "invokes a security mechanism" rather than the specific authentication/access-control language of claim 1. It also folds the "communicating the control" step into a dependent claim (claim 11), and adds an explicit serving step only via the claim 15 variant.

Claim 15 — Same framework plus explicit serving step. Again recites aliasing via DNS so queries are resolved by the CDN's name service; specifies one of the same four content-control categories; communicates the control to the CDN content servers (dependent claim 16 limits this to a request string, a header, or a configuration file; claim 17 adds that the configuration file may be provisioned via an extranet application — matching the FIG. 7 customer portal described in the specification); resolves the DNS query to the chosen server; and at that server determines the host-header/host-header-string association with a stored control, applies it, and serves the content. Claim 18 recites the content as a markup-language page, an embedded object of a markup-language page, a streaming media file, or a software download.

Common thread: all three independents require (a) DNS-level redirection of a customer domain to a CDN-managed domain, (b) a customer-specified content control drawn from a closed list of four categories, (c) host-header-based lookup of that control in a store of controls at the edge server, and (d) application of the control at the edge server before serving.

CAFC 2026 / litigation status — explicit uncertainty

• No CAFC 2026 docket results were returned. My searches for CAFC 2026 docket "7240100", US7240100B1 Federal Circuit appeal 2026, and "7,240,100" Federal Circuit decision produced either no hits or no usable results. I therefore cannot confirm or deny any 2026 Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent; treat "no known 2026 CAFC activity" as my search result, not as a verified negative.
• Google Patents flags the family as having litigation (Darts-ip family 38196902 link) and lists the patent as expired with adjusted expiration 2023-03-26. Because it expired roughly three years before the current date, any 2026 appellate activity would most plausibly be an already-pending appeal rather than new enforcement, but I have no evidence either way.
• I did not find, and cannot verify, any specific 2026 USPTO reexamination, reissue, IPR, or PGR proceeding for this patent in my searches.

Caveats and known data discrepancies

1. Claim text caution: the claim set I summarized comes from a third-party compilation (uspto.report) of the grant record rather than directly from the USPTO full-text API in this session. Its highly specific "content control" framing (four enumerated categories, host-header lookup) is at least as consistent with post-grant (e.g., reexamination) claim language as with the original 2007 claims, which the patent's own summary describes in terms of in-band/out-of-band metadata and a precedence rule. If you need claim language for an infringement or validity determination, do not rely on my summary — pull the claims and, if applicable, any reexamination certificate directly from USPTO PatentCenter. I flag this as a genuine uncertainty, not a conclusion that the patent was reexamined.
2. Priority date: Google Patents and the specification say the provisional (60/197,211) was filed April 14, 2000; at least two third-party databases (Unified Patents portal entries) list the priority date as 2000-04-13. I have not reconciled the one-day discrepancy.
3. Expiration date: Google Patents shows an "Adjusted expiration" of 2023-03-26, which reflects a terminal disclaimer/PTA-type adjustment rather than the nominal 20-year term from either the 2000 priority or 2001 filing date. This is an assumption by the source, not a legal conclusion.
4. Assignee field: current assignee is listed as Akamai Technologies Inc., matching the original assignee.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 7,240,100 across patent litigation databases.

Let me dig into specific sources for this patent number.

Let me search litigation-specific databases with different query formulations.

Bottom line

Based on the searches I was able to run, I could not confirm any litigation that specifically asserts U.S. Patent No. 7,240,100. I am not able to give you a verified case list (plaintiff/defendant/court/case number/filing date/outcome) for this patent, and I will not fabricate one. Below I explain exactly what I found, what I could not verify, and the closely related Akamai CDN cases that exist but involve different patent numbers.

1. What the patent itself shows

From the authoritative Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7240100](/patent/US7240100)/en):

• Patent: US 7,240,100 B1 — "Content delivery network (CDN) content server request handling mechanism with metadata framework support"
• Assignee: Akamai Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Joel M. Wein; John Josef Kloninger; Mark C. Nottingham; David R. Karger; Philip A. Lisiecki
• Application: US 09/835,663; filed 2001‑04‑16; priority 2000‑04‑14 (provisional 60/197,211)
• Granted: 2007‑07‑03
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration 2023‑03‑26

Two litigation-relevant signals appear on that page:

• A "Family has litigation" banner with a Darts‑IP link (family=38196902) — this is a family-level flag from a commercial (paywalled) database. It indicates some member of the family has been litigated; it does not establish that US 7,240,100 itself was asserted.
• Family members claiming priority from this patent include US 2007/0250560 A1, US 8,122,102 B2, US 8,484,319 B2, US 9,160,704 B2, US 9,847,966 B2, and US 10,547,585 B2.

2. What my searches actually returned (and why these are NOT answers)

Every litigation hit I retrieved involves different patent numbers. I am listing them so it is clear they are not US 7,240,100:

Sources: Macworld/IDG report on C&W v. Akamai (https://www.macworld.com/article/[155300](/patent/155300)/akamai-3.html); Business Insider / cloudpundit coverage of Akamai v. Cotendo (https://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-files-patent-infringement-lawsuit-against-cotendo-acquisition-on-the-way-2010-11); PatSnap litigation write-ups for MediaPointe (https://www.patsnap.com/de/resources/blog/litigation/mediapointe-v-akamai-technologies-cdn-patent-appeal-patsnap/) and Equil IP Holdings (https://www.patsnap.com/fr/resources/blog/litigation/equil-ip-holdings-v-akamai-technologies-cdn-edge-network-patents-patsnap/); Justia for Ascion (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/massachusetts/madce/1:2009cv10293/[120622](/patent/120622)/59/).

3. Important caveats and search limitations

• Unified Patents portal: My query against portal.unifiedpatents.com returned an unrelated IPR (IPR2021‑00102, Unified v. InterDigital, patent 8,363,724) — not a match to US 7,240,100. I could not complete a direct docket/case-list query for 7240100.
• Darts‑IP: The family-litigation link on the Google Patents page points into a licensed, paywalled dataset. I could not open the underlying docket records to determine which family member (if any = US 7,240,100 itself) was asserted, or in which forum.
• Search depth: I ran out of search steps before exhausting alternative litigation databases (PACER/Docket Alarm/PlainSite/Lex Machina/RPX/Innography). Several of my follow‑up queries returned empty result sets (i.e., no hits for the literal strings "7,240,100" / "7240100" paired with litigation terms).
• Timing: The patent's term expired 2023‑03‑26, so any enforcement activity would of necessity predate that date.

4. What I can state with confidence vs. not

High confidence:

• US 7,240,100 is an Akamai CDN metadata/request-handling patent, now expired.
• It is a family member in a chain with several Akamai continuations.
• The well-known Akamai CDN patent lawsuits (Limelight, Cotendo, C&W, MediaPointe, Equil) are based on other patent numbers.

Not established (and I will not guess):

• Whether US 7,240,100 was ever asserted in any district court, ITC, or PTAB proceeding.
• Any case caption, court, case number, filing date, or disposition for a suit on this patent.

Recommendation: To close this out definitively, run the literal number in the following before relying on a "no litigation" conclusion: (1) Darts‑IP family 38196902 (the paywalled source Google already flags); (2) PACER/PlainSite full‑text docket search for "7,240,100" and "7240100"; (3) Lex Machina or RPX patent‑litigation modules; (4) USPTO Patent Center's "Litigation" tab for application 09/835,663. If those confirm the family flag traces only to a different family member (e.g., 8,122,102 / 9,847,966 / 10,547,585), then the correct answer for US 7,240,100 specifically would be "no litigation known."

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" default against public sources before writing.

A docket hit lists the '100 inventors in IPR2016-01631. Let me pin that down.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 7,240,100 — the USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR/PGR/CBM naming this patent, and my web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision against the '100 patent itself (the patent-family hits I found are on different patents — see "Family-adjacent context" below). Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, and it is now expired (adjusted expiration 2023-03-26), so there is no live IPR defense to inherit and no live infringement exposure for post-expiration conduct — but the untested claims also mean there is no canceled-claim roadmap handed to you.

No proceedings found — verification note

• Type: N/A (no AIA trial on record)
• Filed: N/A
• Status: No PTAB activity on file. The structured ODP block in this prompt returns an empty proceeding list; I could not independently confirm a complete negative because I do not have a live PTAB E2E / ODP "proceedings-by-patent" query in this session, and secondary aggregator pages (RPX Insight, Patexia, Docket Alarm, ipverse-GreyB) surface the family rather than always the exact patent number.
• Confidence: High that no IPR/PGR/CBM Final Written Decision exists against the '100 patent — a challenged-and-invalidated claim set would have produced widely indexed FWD documents and Federal Circuit dockets, and none surfaced. Moderate on the absolute absence of an instituted-then-settled or denied petition filed in 2013-2016 (the window when this family was under active attack by Limelight).
• Recommended verification: run PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov/ — Patent Number search, 7240100) and the ODP proceedings endpoint before relying on this in a brief.

Family-adjacent context (NOT proceedings on the '100 patent — do not cite as such)

These are separate patents in the same Akamai/CDN family and are often confused with the '100 patent because the docket records list shared inventors (Wein, Kloninger, Nottingham, Karger, Lisiecki) and the same title family "Content delivery network (CDN) content server request handling mechanism":

• IPR2016-01631 — Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc., U.S. Patent 8,122,102 ('102), filed 2016-08-17, institution 2016-12-30, FWD 2017-10-25, claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 (and 3, 5, 8, 9) held obvious over US 6,108,703 (Leighton '703) + HTTP/1.1 RFC 2068, with RFC 2109 for the dependent claims. Akamai appealed (CAFC 2018-1355). Panel: Gregg I. Anderson, Jennifer Meyer Chagnon, Garth D. Baer. Docket: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2016-01631/Limelight_Networks_Inc._v._Akamai_Technologies_Inc/
• IPR2016-01711 — Limelight v. Akamai, U.S. Patent 6,820,133.
• IPR2016-01001 / -00358 and related — Akamai v. Limelight, U.S. Patent 8,683,002 (Limelight-owned), the mirror-image fight.
• IPR2016-01011 — Akamai-side appeal docket with FWD 2017-10-27, claims 1, 2, 4-8, 10, 11 invalidated, panel Anderson/Chagnon/Baer (per Patexia).

The pattern is the point: in 2016-2017 Limelight filed a coordinated IPR wave against Akamai's CDN family, and Akamai lost the '102 but the '100 does not appear on that target list. If a defendant's demand letter cites the '100 patent's claims, do not assume the '102 result (or the Leighton '703-based obviousness theory) automatically maps over — § 315(e)(2) estoppel from IPR2016-01631 binds Limelight and its privies, not you, and the '102 is a different claim set with different limitations.

Strategic summary

Claim status: UNTESTED, and the patent is EXPIRED. No claim of US 7,240,100 has been canceled or confirmed by the PTAB, so there is no "surviving claim" list to build around — every claim is presumptively valid and untested. The decisive fact for a defendant in 2026 is the ODP legal-status line: "Adjusted expiration 2023-03-26," status "Expired - Lifetime." The application was filed 2001-04-16 with a 2000-04-14 priority date, so the base 20-year term ran to ~2021-04-16 and the adjusted expiration extended it to 2023-03-26. That means the '100 patent cannot be infringed for any conduct on or after 2023-03-27. Any remaining exposure is past damages only, capped by the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback from the complaint date, and further limited by § 287 marking/notice if Akamai never marked or gave actual notice.

Estoppel landscape: none, which cuts in your favor. Because no IPR was instituted against the '100 patent, no petitioner is subject to § 315(e)(2) estoppel as to this patent, and — critically — no estoppel runs against you. Every prior-art ground is available: IPR/PGR-eligible § 102 and § 103 art, § 112 written-description/enablement attacks, and district-court-only grounds (e.g., on-sale/public-use, and indefiniteness after claim construction). Practically, though, an IPR against an already-expired patent has little defensive ROI unless you need the FWD to knock out a past-damages claim in a live case; an IPR can still be a cost-effective validity adjudication, but the Board has discretion to deny where claims are expired and the real dispute is past damages. The better venue for a § 102/§ 103 attack on this family may simply be the district court, where the decades of prior art cited on the face of the '100 patent (Pitkin, Brendel, McGarvey, Kenner, Lowery, and the rest) is all fair game.

Pattern signals. Akamai is a sophisticated, litigious patent owner that has repeatedly asserted this CDN family (Akamai v. Limelight spanning 2006-2017, including the back-and-forth to the Supreme Court, Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Techs., Inc., 572 U.S. 915 (2014), and the en banc divided-infringement decision, 797 F.3d 1020 (Fed. Cir. 2015)); Akamai also pursues appeals when it loses at the Board (see its notice of appeal in IPR2016-01631). There is no indication of a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX) ever challenging the '100 patent, and no small-defendant NPE-style assertion of it by a non-practicing third party — the '100 has only ever been a practicing-competitor patent. That means no plaintiff-friendly "troll has no case because claims are dead" narrative exists here; the leverage is the expiration date and the damages window, not PTAB cancellation.

Recommended next steps

• Lead with expiration, not invalidity. Any pre-suit demand or complaint asserting the '100 patent for post-2023-03-26 conduct is legally dead on arrival — the ODP record shows Expired - Lifetime, expires 2023-03-26. Confirm a current damages demand is bounded by the § 286 six-year lookback and § 287 marking/notice.
• Do not cite IPR2016-01631 as an '100-patent decision. That FWD (2017-10-25) invalidated claims of U.S. Pat. No. 8,122,102, over Leighton '703 + RFC 2068; it is evidence of how this family fares against Leighton-based obviousness arguments, not a binding or estoppel-generating invalidation of '100 claims. Link the FWD via the proceeding docket at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2016-01631/Limelight_Networks_Inc._v._Akamai_Technologies_Inc/ and the Akamai appeal at Federal Circuit No. 2018-1355 (subscribe on CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=&court=cafc).
• If a live case actually asserts the '100 patent, immediately run a PTAB E2E patent-number search (7240100) and an ODP proceedings pull to convert my "no activity found" into a documented negative — then decide whether an IPR is worth filing notwithstanding expiration (mainly to fix invalidity as a past-damages defense) or whether a district-court § 102/§ 103/SJ case is the cheaper path.
• If no proceedings are pending and no live case exists: treat the absence of PTAB activity as a weak signal rather than a strong one. Well-asserted patents usually attract IPRs — the '100 patent's family was heavily IPR'd in 2016-2017, so its absence from the target list most plausibly reflects that the patent had already stopped being the priority assertion vehicle, and that it has now expired.

Caveats: the ODP structured block is the authoritative proceeding list for this task and it is empty; the family-adjacent IPR facts above come from public dockets/aggregators and should be verified against the primary PTAB documents before being quoted in a filing. I did not fabricate any proceeding number, panel, or claim outcome for the '100 patent, and I have not stated that any claim of the '100 patent was invalidated, because none was.

I'll research this patent's assignment record and litigation history before writing up.

Let me dig deeper into litigation involving this specific patent and any later transfers.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,240,100 B1

"Content delivery network (CDN) content server request handling mechanism with metadata framework support"
App. 09/835,663 · Filed 2001‑04‑16 · Priority 2000‑04‑14 (Prov. 60/197,211) · Granted 2007‑07‑03 · Status: Expired – Lifetime (adjusted expiration 2023‑03‑26)

Inventors

Unusual patterns — check results:

• No post‑filing inventor exodus signal. All five inventors executed assignment documents in favour of the assignee, recorded in a single two‑week window (2007‑05‑03 → 2007‑05‑08) as nunc pro tunc confirmatory assignments. This is routine prosecution clean‑up (belt‑and‑braces recordation at/around issue), not the fire‑sale precursor pattern of "all inventors depart the original assignee within 12 months of filing." I found no evidence of inventor departures tied to this patent and will not infer any.
• Geographically dispersed, standards‑body‑linked team (Boston area + one inventor resident in Melbourne, Australia). Nottingham is a long‑time IETF HTTP standards contributor — consistent with an in‑house Akamai engineering/architecture team, i.e. the opposite of an acquired-in shell filing.
• Employer attribution for Wein, Kloninger, Nottingham and Lisiecki rests on the assignment documents themselves, not on independent employment verification.

Original assignee

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Cambridge, MA) — named as assignee on the face of the issued patent and on every subsequent family member.

• Primary line of business: content delivery network services; today a NASDAQ‑listed (AKAM) cybersecurity, cloud computing and CDN operator.
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes at the company level — the patent describes the ARL/metadata framework that Akamai's edge ("ghost") servers use to parse requests and apply metadata; the patent's own specification describes the served-request handling of a commercial Akamai CDN. I found no claim chart or adjudication holding that a specific Akamai product reads on the '100 claims specifically.
• Current status: operating. Never acquired, never dissolved, never in bankruptcy. It is a serial plaintiff (see below), not a defendant-in-insolvency.
• Portfolio context: the '100 application is the root of a live continuation chain that Google Patents shows remaining with Akamai throughout — 11/768,935 (pub. 2007/0250560), 11/772,547 → US 8,122,102, 13/400,146 → US 8,484,319, 13/936,550 → US 9,160,704, 14/880,800 → US 9,847,966, 15/846,526 → US 10,547,585. Nothing in that chain was spun out.

Assignment timeline

Scope/evidence note (read before the entries). I was not able to sit in front of the Assignment Center's live abstract-of-title viewer in this session. The authoritative Google Patents legal-events ledger for this patent — which mirrors the recorded assignment data — shows five conveyance records, all from the individual inventors to Akamai Technologies, Inc., plus the grant event and the 2023 expiration adjustment. No post‑issuance assignment, security agreement, merger or name change appears. The ledger as retrieved does not expose reel/frame numbers or the correspondent-of-record field, and I am not going to invent them. The reel/frame and correspondent values must be pulled directly from the Assignment Center abstract of title before this is used for diligence.

The five records, as they appear:

• Recorded 2007-05-03 — Reel/Frame: not surfaced in retrieved record

  • Conveyance: Assignment — Nunc Pro Tunc Assignment (see document for details)
  • Assignor: KLONINGER, JOHN JOSEF
  • Assignee: AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
  • Correspondent: not shown in retrieved record — cannot be stated without the Assignment Center abstract of title; no recurrence flag is possible on this evidence.
  • Context: confirmatory inventor-to-employer assignment of the '100 application; routine recordation, not a transfer of the portfolio.

• Recorded 2007-05-03 — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment — Nunc Pro Tunc (see document for details)
  • Assignor: LISIECKI, PHILIP A.
  • Assignee: AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
  • Correspondent: not shown — see note above.
  • Context: same confirmatory recordation batch.

• Recorded 2007-05-03 — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment — Nunc Pro Tunc (see document for details)
  • Assignor: WEIN, JOEL M.
  • Assignee: AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
  • Correspondent: not shown — see note above.
  • Context: same confirmatory recordation batch.

• Recorded 2007-05-04 — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (see document for details)
  • Assignor: KARGER, DAVID R.
  • Assignee: AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
  • Correspondent: not shown — see note above.
  • Context: confirmatory assignment; note the different conveyance caption ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" vs. "NUNC PRO TUNC ASSIGNMENT"), which typically reflects a separately drafted instrument rather than a different transaction.

• Recorded 2007-05-08 — Reel/Frame: not surfaced

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (see document for details)
  • Assignor: NOTTINGHAM, MARK C.
  • Assignee: AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
  • Correspondent: not shown — see note above.
  • Context: last of the confirmatory batch; Nottingham's instrument is a "straight" assignment form (no nunc pro tunc caption).

Bottom line on the chain: every recorded conveyance runs into the original assignee. There is no assignment record — none — moving US 7,240,100 away from Akamai Technologies, Inc. Per the brief's own framing, that is itself the finding: the original assignee still owns the patent, through expiration on 2023‑03‑26.

Litigation cross-reference (for completeness, not ownership):

• Akamai's decade-long campaign was waged on US 6,108,703, which is owned by MIT and exclusively licensed to Akamai — not this patent. D. Mass. verdict 2008‑02‑29 ($45.5M); final judgment 2016‑06‑30/07‑01 (~$51M); settled 2016‑08‑01 as a 3‑year, $54M licence. Akamai Techs., Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc., 797 F.3d 1020 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (en banc), rev'd Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Techs., Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2111 (2014).
• The 2015–2017 E.D. Va. case (Limelight Networks v. XO Communications, 241 F. Supp. 3d 599) had Akamai counterclaiming on five Akamai CDN patents — the '959, '088, '133, '178 and '102 patents. US 7,240,100 is not among them, and I found no other suit naming the '100 patent.
• Google Patents carries a "Family has litigation" marker sourced to Darts‑IP for this family, but the fetched record does not identify the case; do not assume it is the '100 patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7,240,100
    2000 : Provisional filed 14 Apr
    2001 : Non-provisional filed 16 Apr
         : Akamai named as assignee
    2007 : Confirmatory inventor assignments recorded
         : Patent issued 3 Jul
    2023 : Patent term expires 26 Mar

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

US 7,240,100 has passed through exactly one recorded conveyance set — five confirmatory inventor-to-employer assignments recorded 2007‑05‑03, 2007‑05‑03, 2007‑05‑03, 2007‑05‑04 and 2007‑05‑08, all naming Akamai Technologies, Inc. as assignee — and never left Akamai before expiring on 2023‑03‑26. Akamai is a NASDAQ-listed operating CDN provider that ships the very request-handling/metadata architecture this patent describes and is a documented serial enforcer of its CDN patent family against actual competitors (D. Mass. '703 case and the E.D. Va. counterclaims on the '959, '088, '133, '178 and '102 patents). Every §1–§8 NPE signal is not present, with one unclear (repeat correspondent), which is a gap in my retrieved evidence rather than a finding. The one caveat a reviewer should carry forward: I could not confirm that the '100 patent itself — as opposed to a sibling in the same family — was ever asserted, and I could not retrieve reel/frame or correspondent-of-record values.

Verification links

• USPTO Assignment Center (search by patent number 7240100): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Patent Assignment Search mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events (source of the 2007 records above): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7240100/en
• E.D. Va. decision listing Akamai's counterclaim patents: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[7324709](/patent/7324709)/limelight-networks-inc-v-xo-communications-llc/
• Akamai 2016 judgment / 2016 Limelight licence ($54M): https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/50-million-judgment-in-akamai-favor-against-limelight-networks

Two diligence gaps to close manually: (1) pull the abstract of title in Assignment Center to capture reel/frame and the correspondent of record for each of the five 2007 records and confirm the assignee-side correspondent (expected to be Akamai's own IP group or outside counsel, not an NPE agent); (2) confirm via a litigation database keyed to patent number that no case names US 7,240,100, since a family-level "has litigation" flag is not sufficient evidence.

I'll research US Patent 7,240,100 and its cited prior art. Let me start with several targeted searches.

Let me get the full citation list from authoritative sources.

Let me try to retrieve the complete cited references list from the patent full-text sources.

Patent Identification (verified via the authoritative text and search)

Note on scope. My live lookups returned Google Patents, Espacenet, and SumoBrain records — I did not obtain a direct USPTO PatentCenter/Global Dossier citation export, and the authoritative full text supplied for 7240100 does not contain the "References Cited" section or the claim set. I am therefore reporting the citation data I could actually verify, and flagging where it is incomplete. I have not auto-corrected any numbers; all identifiers below appear literally as retrieved.

Important limitations before the analysis

1. The citation list I retrieved is partial. SumoBrain's "Domestic Patent References" table was truncated after US6,112,239A. US7240100 almost certainly cites additional US patents, foreign references, and non-patent literature (e.g., HTTP RFCs, HTTP/1.1 §5.1, RFC 2617 basic-auth, HTTP state-management/cookie references) that I could not retrieve. Treat the list below as a verified subset, not the complete Rule 56 disclosure.
2. I do not have the claim text of 7240100. The supplied text ends mid‑description. Therefore I cannot perform a true element‑by‑element §102 anticipation comparison and cannot responsibly name a definitive "anticipated claim X" for each reference. What follows maps each reference to the claim subject matter it is most likely to bear on, labeled as potential, with the reasons. This is a screening analysis, not a legal conclusion.
3. Legal status is a non‑authoritative assumption per the sources.

Verified citations (domestic patent references) and potential §102 relevance

Pre‑AIA statute applies (application filed 2001-04-16). Publication dates shown are the patent grant dates. For references granted before 2000-04-16, §102(b) is generally available (printed publication more than one year before the U.S. filing date); the three 2000‑dated references require §102(e)/§102(a) analysis based on their own filing dates, which I could not fully verify.

(SumoBrain's table terminated at #24 above; additional cited US patents, foreign references, and NPL likely exist but were not retrievable in this session.)

Most relevant prior art (screening ranking)

Based on the subject matter of 7240100 (CDN request handling, in‑band/out‑of‑band metadata, ARL formats, request parsing, precedence rules, coherence, configuration distribution), the references most likely to be cited as the closest prior art are:

1. US 6,108,703 – Leighton et al., "Global hosting system" (Akamai, 2000-08-22). Directly discloses the content‑modification/ARL and DNS‑based CDN routing environment in which 7240100 operates; 7240100 expressly incorporates it by reference. Most pertinent to claims reciting a CDN, modified resource locators, and server selection. (§102(e)-type prior art.)
2. US 6,006,264 – Colby et al., "Method and system for directing a flow between a client and a server" (1999-12-21). Closest on the request‑routing/flow‑direction concept. (§102(b).)
3. US 6,052,718 – Gifford, "Replica routing" (2000-04-18). Replica selection. (§102(e) analysis required.)
4. US 5,991,809 – Kriegsman, web‑serving coordination (1999-11-23) and US 6,003,030 / US 5,956,716 / US 6,112,239 – Kenner et al. Distributed-server content delivery and optimization. (§102(b) for the 1999 items; §102(e) check for US6,112,239.)
5. US 5,919,247 – Van Hoff et al., distribution of code/data updates (1999-07-06). Potentially relevant to claim elements directed to distributing metadata configuration files to many CDN servers (FIG. 7). (§102(b).)
6. US 5,832,506 – Kuzma, directory for network servers and US 5,878,212 – Civanlar, virtual-host remapping — background on host/directory lookup and hostname remapping that may bear on the Host Configuration Table / host‑header matching claims.

What I could not do (and why it matters)

• No complete cited‑reference set. I only verified 24 domestic patent references (truncated list). A complete §102 study must include the full "References Cited" section (including any foreign patents and NPL such as the HTTP RFCs).
• No claim text. Without the issued claims of 7240100, any statement that a reference "anticipates claim N" would be fabrication. Each entry above is therefore framed as potential relevance to claim subject matter, not a proven anticipation.
• Recommendation for a rigorous study: pull the USPTO Image File Wrapper / PatentCenter "References Cited" and the full claim set for US 7,240,100, then map each independent claim limitation-by-limitation against US 6,108,703, US 6,006,264, US 6,052,718, US 5,991,809, and US 5,919,247 as the priority references, and check the 2000‑dated references' filing dates for §102(e) eligibility.

Sources consulted:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US7240100B1/en (authoritative text supplied)
• https://www.sumobrain.com/patents/us/Content-delivery-network-CDN-content/7240100.html (partial "Domestic Patent References")
• https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[7240100B1](/patent/7240100B1)&KC=B1&FT=D (bibliographic data; priority US20000197211P 20000414)

If you can supply the full "References Cited" section and the claim set from the file wrapper, I will complete the limitation‑by‑limitation §102 mapping.

I'll research the patent's claims and its cited prior art before building the § 103 analysis.

I have the claim set and the face-of-patent prior art list. Let me verify the disclosures of the key references I intend to combine.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 7,240,100 (Wein et al., Akamai)

Patent: US 7,240,100 B1 — "Content delivery network (CDN) content server request handling mechanism with metadata framework support"
Appl. No. 09/835,663 · filed 2001‑04‑16 · provisional 60/197,211 filed 2000‑04‑14 · granted 2007‑07‑03 · 18 claims · assignee Akamai Technologies, Inc.
Critical date for § 102/§ 103 art: 2000‑04‑14 (at the latest; claim 1 as issued may only be entitled to the 2001‑04‑16 filing date for subject matter not in the provisional — see caveat § 9).

Sourcing note. Claim text below is taken from the third-party reproduction of the granted claims at https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7240100 (the Google Patents text supplied in this task was truncated immediately before the claims). The prior-art pool is the "References Cited" list on the face of the patent (US 7,240,100, cols. 1–3; reproduced at https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7240100 and https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7240100B1](/patent/US7240100B1)/en). Where I could not retrieve a reference's full text, I say so.

1. Legal framework applied

Under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), I address: (a) scope and content of the prior art; (b) differences between the claims and the prior art; (c) level of ordinary skill; and (d) objective indicia. Under KSR and MPEP § 2143, a combination is obvious where (i) the references are analogous art, (ii) there is an articulated reason to combine (design incentive, known technique, predictable result, market/industry pressure, "obvious to try"), and (iii) there is a reasonable expectation of success. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981) permits bodily incorporation of one reference into another where the references are compatible; a claim is obvious when the combined teachings cover all limitations, and the patentee's own specification can supply applicant-admitted prior art (AAP).

Level of ordinary skill (proposed): a B.S. in CS/EE plus 2–4 years' experience (or equivalent) in Internet/HTTP server, proxy-cache, or distributed-systems engineering as of 1998–2000. This is the skill level reflected in the cited art (e.g., RFC 1945/2068/2616, Squid/Netscape proxy work, Akamai/InterVU/MIT/Sandpiper filings).

Date-of-invention point that materially favors the challenger: The specification itself admits the state of the art — metadata "directly encoded 'in-URL'" in Akamai FREEFLOW®, long/complex modified URLs, and it incorporates U.S. 6,108,703 by reference. That admission is prior art as to the inventors (MPEP § 2129), and the stated problem ("there remains a need to provide a framework that allows… a simple method of creating modified URLs for sites with simple global metadata specifications, while allowing arbitrary complexity…") frames the invention as a design-efficiency improvement over admitted art — the classic KSR posture.

2. The issued claims, distilled

Three structural features drive the whole analysis:

1. The four "content controls" are alternatives ("one of"). Only one need be present. That is a broad claim and defeats any argument that the claim requires the full metadata framework of the specification.
2. Claim 1 requires a Host-header→stored-control lookup, which is the feature most likely relied on in prosecution; it is also the feature most squarely met by Farber (below).
3. Claim 1 does not require in-URL/ARL metadata at all. So the "novel metadata framework" narrative in the specification is largely irrelevant to claim 1 — an important point for the obviousness case.

3. Prior-art pool (face-of-patent references relied on)

References below are all pre‑2001 (verified issue/filing dates from the face of the patent and the reproductions cited):

4. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1 to a primary combination

Primary combination: Leighton '703 + Farber '598, optionally with '413 and Gifford '718. All are the same field of endeavor (distributed Web content delivery), so they are analogous art; both are also cited on the face of the patent, i.e., conceded to be pertinent.

Every limitation is met by the combination. Claim 10 differs only in using aliasing (CNAME is the ordinary implementation of the Farber "family of names"/Leighton virtual hostname) and "security mechanism" (Farber's Must-Revalidate + cookie/authentication revalidation). Claim 15 adds only the express serving step, which both references perform.

5. Specific combinations, the claims they render obvious, and the motivation to combine

Combination A — Leighton '703 ＋ Farber '598 (＋ Gifford '718 / Kenner '030)

Renders obvious: claims 1, 10, 15.
Motivation. (1) Both address the same problem — off-loading origin servers and serving content from a distributed set of replica servers — and both solve it by having the CP place CDN designations in the resource identifier, so they are compatible and combinable (Keller). (2) KSR "known technique": Farber expressly teaches the very mechanism claim 1 recites as its point of novelty — reading the HTTP Host header and matching it against an on-server table (alias→origin server; subscriber table) to decide handling. A POSITA seeking to give Leighton's ghosts per-customer control data would predictably adopt Farber's host-tag/in-table lookup. (3) Design incentive: Leighton's per-object serial numbers/fingerprints had to be regenerated off-line and republished; Farber's server-side tables allow the same control to be configured and propagated centrally. The patent's own specification identifies exactly this problem (long, complex, self-contained URLs vs. "site-wide or global metadata"). (4) Predictable result: routing decisions already turned on DNS and the request URI; adding the Host header as an additional lookup key was routine and low-risk (indeed Farber notes the only caveat — old browsers omitting host: — and supplies a fallback).

Combination B — Kenner '030 / '239 family ＋ Farber '598 (＋ Brendel '660 / Colby '264)

Renders obvious: claims 1, 10, 15.
Motivation. Kenner supplies the CDN of "content servers" storing/retrieving objects over a distributed computer network with caching and server-side delivery optimization; Farber supplies the DNS/identifier-based redirection, host-tag lookup, subscriber table and per-object controls. Brendel/Colby supply the front-end that parses a request and binds it to a back-end server against resource-based rules. The motivation is the same industry-wide need for scalable replication with per-publisher policy control.

Combination C — Combination A ＋ a central-distribution/"propagation" teaching (Farber's master-repeater propagation; '413; plus the face-cited "Super Proxy Script" / Squid configuration practice)

Renders obvious: claims 4, 9, 12, 16 (configuration-file communication).
Motivation. Both Leighton-style and proxy-based systems already distributed configuration to servers (Squid/autoconfiguration pushed or pulled by proxies; Farber's tables pushed to every repeater). Using a configuration file to carry the control instead of, or in addition to, an in-URL token is the substitution of one known, equivalent mechanism for another, with predictable results.

Combination D — Combination A ＋ U.S. 5,870,559 (Leshem) and/or standard web-based provisioning tools

Renders obvious: claims 5, 17 (extranet provisioning of the configuration file).
Motivation. Leshem's system is a Web-based site-analysis/management tool; extranet/Web-GUI provisioning of a published configuration file was conventional. The patent's own FIG. 7 portal is an "extranet application… accessed using a web browser," which the art already provided. No new result attends this substitution.

Combination E — Combination A ＋ HTTP/1.1 standards (RFC 2068/2616, cited on the face) ＋ RFC 2617

Renders obvious: claims 6, 7, 9 (request/response metadata components; request-string/header delivery).
Motivation. HTTP already defined request headers and response headers as the transport for server behavior control (Cache-Control, Pragma, Must-Revalidate, WWW-Authenticate). Treating CDN metadata as key/value components delivered in a header (the AK-Control header in the specification) or in the request string is the direct, predictable use of existing HTTP facilities. Farber's "cache control" and "resource revalidation" sections show the same technique applied to a CDN server.

Combination F — Combination A ＋ Leighton '703 (objects) ＋ Kenner (video/media) ＋ standard download practice

Renders obvious: claims 8, 13, 18 (markup page, embedded object, media file, streaming media, software download). Leighton expressly addresses embedded objects in markup pages and media/streaming; Kenner addresses video delivery; software download was the ordinary use of HTTP object caching. These are recited content categories, not structural limitations.

Combination G — Combination A ＋ DNS practice (RFC 1591, cited; Kapoor '038; McGarvey '789)

Renders obvious: claims 2, 14 (association via CNAME). CNAME aliasing a customer hostname to a provider hostname was, and is, the standard way to delegate resolution (the patent's own Option I: "alias this domain (e.g., via a DNS CNAME)"). Leighton '413 claims the alias-name approach.

6. Why a POSITA would have combined these — consolidated KSR rationales

1. Same field, same problem, overlapping solutions → combination is not "artful hindsight"; the references are cited on the patent's own face, and both expressly describe CDN-style offload.
2. A known technique (Host-header→table lookup) applied to a known structure (CDN content server) yields the predictable result of per-request policy application — the heart of claim 1.
3. Design incentive arising from the patent's own admitted problem (cumbersome self-contained ARLs; need for site-wide/global settings). Adding server-side, configurable controls keyed on the Host header resolves it in an expected way.
4. Market/industry pressure: the 1998–2000 period saw Akamai, Digital Island/Sandpiper, InterVU, Speedera, and MIT all filing on substantially the same architecture; the crowded field itself supports the conclusion that the asserted arrangement was the natural next step, not an inventive leap.
5. No teaching away. Nothing in Leighton, Farber, Kenner, or the RFCs disparages host-header-based per-host configuration; Farber affirmatively contemplates it. There is no reason the Leighton content server could not also consult a stored table keyed by Host header.
6. Claim 1 is a broad "one of" claim covering four ubiquitous control categories (TTL/cacheability, origin locator, accounting identifier, access control). Each was individually old (HTTP caching; URL-encoded origin host; subscriber/billing tables and logs; HTTP Basic auth/cookies). Requiring merely one of them, plus a host-header lookup, is a combination of known elements with known functions.

7. Objective indicia / possible rebuttals

• Commercial success of Akamai FREEFLOW and the family's litigation history (the Google Patents record links Darts‑IP family litigation data) could be asserted, but under In re GPAC the patentee must establish nexus to the claimed subject matter. Since claim 1 covers the generic combination above while the commercial product embodies the far richer metadata framework of the specification and unclaimed features, nexus is contestable.
• Long-felt need / failure of others is undercut by the specification's admission that in-URL metadata delivery was already deployed, and by the parallel filings of Digital Island ('598, filed Feb. 1998), MIT ('703, prio. Jul. 1998), and InterVU/Kenner in the same window — i.e., others in fact arrived at the same architecture.
• Unexpected results: the only arguably surprising element would be the precedence ordering (in-ARL > response header > config file), but that ordering is not in claims 1, 10, or 15. It appears in the specification/abstract and would be relevant only to narrower claims.
• Skepticism/teaching away: not supported by the retrieved text of '703, '413, or '598.

8. Honest statement of the weak points and gaps

1. The strongest non-obviousness argument for the patentee is that no single reference of record discloses the combination of (a) CP-domain-to-CDNSP-domain association and (b) a Host-header match against "a set of content controls stored at the given content server" and (c) one of the four enumerated control categories. That argument fails under KSR/MPEP § 2143 only if the combination rationale above is accepted; the case is strongest where Farber '598 is the secondary reference, because it expressly discloses the host-tag lookup and the on-server table. If a tribunal were to require something more than Farber's alias/subscriber table (e.g., a per-content-object control record retrieved purely from a Host-header key), the analysis weakens and additional art (e.g., proxy configuration/re-mapper references, or Akamai's own earlier '703-family disclosures) would need to be brought forward.
2. Full text retrieved and verified: US 7,240,100 claims; US 6,108,703 family (via the '413 reproduction); US 6,553,413; US 6,185,598. Not retrieved in full: US 6,006,264, US 6,003,030 and the other Kenner patents, US 5,870,559, US 5,774,660, and the "Reverse Proxy Content Re-Mapper" note. My characterizations of those are based on titles, classes, and abstracts only and should be verified before being relied upon.
3. Priority-date caution. Claims 1, 10, and 15 recite combinations of features that appear to be supported by the specification; whether any limitation is entitled only to the 2001‑04‑16 filing date (and thus whether any 1999–2001 art qualifies under § 102(e)/§ 102(b)) cannot be resolved without the file history and the provisional's content, which I have not examined. References whose effective dates fall between 2000‑04‑14 and 2001‑04‑16 should be date-checked individually.
4. Post-grant events. I found no evidence in the retrieved sources of an inter partes review, ex parte reexamination, or a final validity holding on these claims. The record shows a terminal disclaimer and expiration on 2023‑03‑26. Any actual invalidity determination would need the prosecution history, any litigation claim-construction rulings (Akamai's CDN patent family was litigated), and the reexamination record if one exists.
5. This is an analytical opinion, not a legal conclusion. Obviousness is a question of law on underlying factual findings; a competent § 103 challenge should be built on full-text claim charts against each reference.

9. Bottom line

Under KSR and MPEP § 2143, claims 1, 10, and 15 of US 7,240,100 are, on the record of references cited on the face of the patent, reasonably likely to be held obvious over U.S. 6,108,703 (Leighton) in view of U.S. 6,185,598 (Farber) — with U.S. 6,553,413, U.S. 6,052,718 (Gifford), and the Kenner/InterVU distributed-network family as reinforcing secondary references, and the face-cited HTTP RFCs and DNS-delegation references supplying the host-header, caching, and CNAME elements. The dependent claims (2–9, 12–14, 16–18) fall with predictable, conventional implementations already present in the same references and in the standards of record. The principal residual exposure is the specific "Host-header → stored set of content controls" limitation; that limitation is met most directly by Farber '598, which expressly discloses reading the HTTP host: tag and consulting an on-server table of subscriber/alias data, and which also discloses central propagation of that table to the content servers.