Online retailer Newegg has developed a reputation for fighting hard against the kind of non-practicing patent holders often called "patent trolls." Now a long fight against one such entity, called SFA Systems, has reached a conclusion, and the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied (PDF) Newegg's request to have its legal fees paid.
SFA Systems, formerly known as Triton IP, was one of a network of patent-holding companies controlled by Erich Spangenberg. SFA's patent was originally acquired from a Minnesota computer company called Clear With Computers, and SFA later acquired a second related patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office. Under Spangenberg's guidance, SFA sued dozens of retailers for having websites that allegedly constituted "sales force automation systems" as described in two patents, numbered 6,067,525 and 7,941,341.
Those stores nearly all reached settlement agreements for the SFA patents, but Newegg didn't. Rather than see the case through trial, SFA dismissed its case before trial in 2013 and promised Newegg a covenant not to sue.
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