Patent troll Soverain, who has won cases against companies like Amazon for use of shopping cart technology, has had a case against Newegg summarily slapped down by the US Court of Appeal. Newegg successfully showed that the two shopping cart patents owned by Soverain are invalid. Their argument? The online system CompuServe was using similar technology in the 1980s. Apparently saying "but we do it on the Internet" isn't a valid argument This could potentially have a massive effect because the decision affects all previous cases brought by Soverain over the shopping cart issue - especially important, because most of Soverain's settled cases include a running 1% royalty each time a shopping cart is used. Ars article here, including a quote from Newegg's chief legal officer:
Fantastic, patent trolls really do annoy me. Defiantly hold back progress and profit on others hard work.