Evan on Engineering Software

Maybe a little off the beaten path for this blog, but very relevant:  The Supreme Court ruled today in a case involving eBay and MercExchange, on the issue of whether injunctions would be generally given automatically in cases involving patent infringement.  You can read a great analysis of this decision at the Fenwick & West web site (good folks, these.  Some of my favorite IP attorneys.)

This ruling will affect the case involving Autodesk and Microsoft, and an inventor who had obtained a patent relating to software copy protection.  In short, although Autodesk and Microsoft lost in the first round, the opposing party is not likely to have the "big stick" of threatening to shut off sales of their products through injunction -- as was the situation with the recent case of NTP v. Research In Motion (RIM, developers of the Blackberry), where the spectre of an injunction forced RIM to enter into a $612 million settlement.

Quoting from Fenwick's analysis:

In ruling for defendant eBay, the Supreme Court clarified that plaintiffs seeking permanent injunctions in patent cases must always satisfy a four-factor equitable test in order to obtain a permanent injunction. Specifically, the patent owner must prove that (i) the plaintiff has suffered an irreparable injury, (ii) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate to compensate for that injury, (iii) that an equitable remedy such as an injunction is warranted in light of the balance of the hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, and (iv) that the public interest would not be disserved by the granting of an injunction. 

While I believe that Autodesk and Microsoft will ultimately find prior art in their case, and the patent in question will be eventually overturned, this ruling comes non-to-soon for them, and would appear to give them some breathing room.  Too bad it didn't come soon enough for RIM.