The Prior Art

Patent Litigation Weekly: Eolas in Texas, Triune Star fee award, and Guardian Media saga moves to appeals court

For Eolas, a Texas address, Dallas lawyers, and Plano targets.

Eolas Technology, a company built on a patent that originated at the University of California, has gone Texan. Eolas—having settled a previous infringement suit against Microsoft after winning a jury verdict of more than $500 million—this week asserted its 5,838,906 patent in a suit filed against 23 companies, including large banks, technology companies, and retailers. The goal, obviously, is to amass a new fortune via the patent wielded against Microsoft, as well its flashier child-patent, No. 7,599,985. The common thread connecting the targeted companies: they all employ browser plug-ins and “AJAX” technologies that have been used in some form on the Web for more than a decade.

Despite that, Eolas attorney Mike McKool of McKool Smith is confident the '906 patent will hold up in the current litigation. Speaking with The Am Law Litigation Daily, McKool emphasized that the patent has already been tested three times in PTO reexaminations. (It’s worth noting, of course, that none of the present defendants were around for those hearings.)

As for Eolas itself, the patent-holding company has evolved since it was last heard from. It had just one employee—Dr. Mike Doyle, who lives in the Chicago area—when it sued Microsoft, and its payroll doesn’t appear to have grown much since then. The Eolas website, however, claims the company now does research and development in addition to enforcing patents, though the links its research accomplishments are mostly brief descriptions of patents or patent applications.

Illinois judge sees the infra-red light, finds patent lawsuit frivolous

Frequent patent defendants say they're hit by frivolous lawsuits all the time. But it's very rare for a judge to find a patent lawsuit to be frivolous enough to grant sanctions and attorney's fees.

It happened last week in Peoria, Illinois. A company called Triune Star owns patent 6,122,521, which covers a camera with a GPS locator in it. But it only covers infrared cameras, a limitiation that the patent examiner insisted on adding in order to grant a patent. Patent was granted in 2000, and lawsuit was filed in September 2007 against telephone manufacturers LG Electronics and Pantech, as well as Disney, which partnered with them to sell "family phones" with GPS locators that parents could use to track their kids. The service ran from mid-2006 to end of 2007 before it was shut down.