October 17, 2011 - Lucent-Alcatel sued online retailers Newegg Inc. and Overstock.com, Inc. (O.co) for infringing three patents related to e-commerce functionalities that are used by almost every e-commerce website. However, Newegg and Overstock enjoyed unexpected success when a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found that the defendants did not infringe any of the three patents. The jury verdict went a step further and invalidated U.S. Patent no. 5,649,131 (Alcatel's '131 patent) as obvious.
"This is a great day for O.co, and marks the second time we've invalidated key patents asserted against us," said Patrick Byrne, O.co Chairman and CEO, in a press release.
Alcatel previously brought suit against several other retailers, and many settled without going to court - including Amazon.com, Zappos, Sears, Lands' End, Netflix, QVC and Kmart.