Large technology companies have long complained about overly broad patents and "patent trolls," whose business is buying patents and filing infringement lawsuits seeking royalties.
The Exxon Mobil Corporation said a Texas judge had thrown out the main claims in a lawsuit filed by the state seeking royalties from company wells in eastern Texas.
At issue is whether a patent holder can seek royalties from multiple companies as a patented product works its way through the manufacturing process.
A pack of IBM employees in blue suits showed up at Sun headquarters seeking royalties for 7 patents that IBM claimed Sun had infringed.
Medinol's lawsuit, filed in April 2001, is seeking royalties of up to 23percentt on every Express and Taxus stent Boston Scientific has sold.
Rambus filed suit in September against Infineon Technologies, a German chip maker, charging patent infringement and seeking royalties for using its technology; Infineon countersued.
LZW was the source of a controversy started by the American Unisys Corporation in 1994, when it was revealed that they owned a patent for LZW and were belatedly seeking royalties from several users.
Although warned that Mr. Onyeabor was a tough negotiator (having once allegedly pulled a gun on a Wilfilms artist seeking royalties), Mr. Ikonne anticipated a brief journey to Nigeria.
A federal judge yesterday invalidated a broad patent held by the University of Rochester on a popular class of painkillers and dismissed the school's lawsuit seeking royalties from Pharmacia and Pfizer on sales of their big-selling drug Celebrex.
If the university had won, it would also have been in a position to seek royalties on sales of other painkillers of the same type, known as Cox-2 inhibitors, like Merck's Vioxx.
"With the exception of Motorola, these companies are all very weak in terms of intellectual property rights, which means that they will likely be easier targets for the consortium in terms of seeking royalties".
