Summary: A roundup of news about software patents and patent trolls in the land where these thrive

A recent article from Daniel Nazer of the EFF (cross-posted in TechDirt) reminded us that the focus at EFF these days is "bad patents" such as medical ones that are technically nonsense and usually serve to deny people treatment they may need. This is a type of patents which other than software patents we have covered here a lot of times in the past. It's worse than anticompetitive patents.

In another bit of news we find yet another defeat for software patents and a defeat for patent trolls that attack Google and are now forced to compensate Google for the trouble. "In January," says the report, "Google won a jury trial against a so-called "patent troll" called Beneficial Innovations, which sued dozens of media companies over online ad patents.

"But it wasn't a defensive win in which Google lawyers were laying out arguments about why they didn't infringe a patent. Instead, Google had gone on the offensive and said that Beneficial's 2011 patent lawsuit against a dozen major media companies was a breach of contract."

Another article about it, citing the above, says:

GOOGLE HAS WON $1.3m in legal fees from a notorious patent troll.

Arstechnica first reported the rather convoluted story, which began in 2011 when well-known software patent litigator Beneficial Innovations sued a dozen large media companies over online ad patents that it holds.

Many of the online publications owned by those media companies were simply using Google's Doubleclick advertising technology, and Google had licensed the patents at issue.

"Beneficial went back on the terms of its own licence agreement, pursuing our customers for simply using our licensed services," said Google at the time.

Google interceded on behalf of its customers and prevailed in a jury trial in January, arguing successfully that Beneficial was in breach of contract by suing over patents that Google had licensed. Google won a nominal $1 judgment plus an injunction barring Beneficial Innovations from suing additional Google customers.

Now, the court has awarded Google the right to recover from Beneficial most of its legal costs for defending its customers, according to Arstechnica. US District Court judge Rodney Gilstrap ruled that Google was the prevailing party on the breach of contract issue and that the firm's request to recover attorneys' fees was reasonable.

Watch the patent lawyers panicking over the increasing difficulty in getting patents on software granted and see this news about new state-level actions/sanctions against patent trolls:

As of two days ago, Illinois became the 18th state with a law prohibiting bad faith assertions of patent infringement. (That is, fraudulent demand letters.) It seems that if Congress won’t act, the states will do whatever they can (which is limited) to deal with patent trolls.

Things are definitely improving on the patent front this year. ⬆