An article appearing in IPO Daily News bemoans a recent decision (Voda v. Cordis Corp.) of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit – the patent appeals court – as upholding the “categorical rule” that a “patent owner cannot obtain a permanent injunction by showing irreparable harm to its exclusive licensee.” The anguish is misplaced for two reasons: (1) the Court did not so hold; and (2) the entire problem could have been avoided if the patentee had employed better legal tactics.

On August 2, Tucson-based company Research Corporation Technologies (RCT) won a reversal of a federal court decision that had found RCT's six patents-in-suit unenforceable due to "inequitable conduct" and denied RCT's charges of patent infringement by Microsoft. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had also granted Microsoft a summary judgment finding the patents invalid and non-infringed.

RCT has also licensed its "Blue Noise Mask" digital imaging patents to HP, Lexmark, and Epson.

Microsoft continues to maintain that the RCT patents are invalid and not infringed by Windows or Office.

March 30, 2008 - Zap Media, an Atlanta-based media services company, is suing Apple for patent infringement. Zap's patent, U.S. patent no. 7020704, covers a "system and method for distributing media assets to user devices via a portal synchronized by said user devices."

The company claims that its patent is infringed by iPod and iTunes.