SAN FRANCISCO -- Cable & Wireless (NYSE: CWP - News), the inventor of content-delivery-network (CDN) technology, today asked a U.S. District Court to forbid Akamai Technologies, Inc. from selling its EdgeSuite (formerly known as FreeFlow) products and services until the company removes a key, patented technology that sidesteps Internet congestion by finding alternative paths for information to travel.If granted, the preliminary injunction would prevent Akamai from marketing and selling products and services that infringe on Cable & Wireless' U.S. Patent 6,275,470, which covers the Host-to-Host Adaptive Routing Protocol (HHARP), its Internet optimal-routing patent. A preliminary injunction is an emergency request typically heard quickly by a court.HHARP is a technology that creates an overlay network for the Internet that "tunnels" or sidesteps around problem network links or nodes, such as edge servers or routers, by requesting the optimal path between two points, such as between a customer's origin server and a CDN server at the edge of the Internet, to quickly and reliably deliver the information. HHARP compensates for poor network performance caused by hardware and link failures, configuration errors, incorrect or sub-optimal routing policies and congestion at busy "intersections." Its routing systems can work in conjunction with standard TCP/IP routing protocols to instantly detect and temporarily avoid routing paths with these performance problems without changes to senders and receivers. "Akamai should not be allowed to sell products and services that are based on our patent, and we are confident that Akamai will be found to be infringing," 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. "We continue to aggressively protect HHARP and our other intellectual property assets for the benefit of our customers." Cable & Wireless Akamai Technologies Inc.