John Funk, a partner in Evergreen Innovation Partners, recently had a nice summary of the minor victory eBay just had in at the Supreme Court in the universe of defending against software patents. As John points out, it’s a minor victory, but helps reinforce that an injunction and system shutdown is not an automatic outcome when a court finds a company to be infringing on a patent.)
John and I have been colleagues (I was an investor in Exactis (fka Mercury Mail / Infobeat – his first company), adversaries (Infobeat sued a company I co-founded – Email Publishing – for patent infringement – which was eventually settled for $1 and a cross-licensing agreement between Exactis and MessageMedia (the company that acquired Email Publishing)), and once again friends and colleagues (I’m an investor in John’s latest company, Evergreen IP.)
John has been around patents and the law for a long time – I expect he’ll continue to have great insights (some which I’ll agree with, some which I won’t) up on his blog in the future.