January 31, 2011 - Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Cordis Corp. have been ordered to pay $482 million to Bruce Saffran, a doctor from New Jersey, for infringing his patent on a cardiac stent.

January 17, 2011 - Wi-LAN, a patent holding company based in Ottawa, Canada, announced on January 14 that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Intel to end the litigation that the two companies had pending in U.S. District Courts in Texas and California.

January 13, 2011 - iLOR LLC, a Kentucky-based Internet company, may have lost its patent infringement case against Google Inc.

January 11, 2011 - For all the fuss about non-practicing entities (NPEs), and all the proposed patent reforms aimed at controlling them, they are still winning the largest damages awards on average in patent infringement cases.

That was the finding of the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP's 2010 Patent Litigation Study, which also revealed that:

December 28, 2010 - A non-practicing entity (NPE) called Gradient Enterprises, Inc. filed a patent lawsuit against VoIP giant Skype Technologies S.A. on December 21, claiming infringement of its patent on a method of network monitoring.

December 20, 2010 - After four years of litigation with Limelight Networks Inc., Akamai Technologies Inc. lost the patent infringement case at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).

December 15, 2010 - In August of this year, a company called Interval Licensing LLC (founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen) sued 11 Internet giants - AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube - alleging infringement of four patents. That lawsuit was dismissed on December 10.

December 15, 2010 - Eastman Kodak Co. filed a patent infringement suit against Shutterfly Inc., an online photo sharing service, and has been sued in return.

Kodak alleges that Shutterfly infringes its patent(s), but did not specify which patents were infringed in its complaint, only that it is seeking an injunction plus damages, legal fees and other costs.