The company known to be a “patent troll” Eolas Technologies will continue to sue Google. Judge in Texas transferred its lawsuit to California following the mandamus order from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.
The court order was issued on Thursday, Feb. 23, World Intellectual Property Review reported. The lawsuit was filed in November 2015 in in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accusing Google to violate the company’s patent.
Eolas also filed related lawsuit against Walmart and Amazon, accusing the two retailers to infringe its patent as well. However, in the case against Walmart and Amazon, the Court of Appeals did not rule to transfer their case to California. Therefore, the legal battle between Eolas Technologies against Walmart and Amazon will stay in Texas courtroom.
The transfer of case to California was taken based on two reasons. The first one was the error in the Texas court in favor patent holder, Eolas. While the second one is the proper consideration of defendants’ location in Northern District of California that will ease the evidence gathering.
Eolas Technologies has been nicknamed “patent troll” due to its business model to sue big companies in patent lawsuit. The company was founded by the IT head at the University of California San Fransiso Michael Doyle based on the patent he owned. He claimed to be the first one who developed interactive web, which allow multimedia content to be interactive in web browser.
He started his venture by filing lawsuit against Microsoft in 1999, Ars Technica reported. Following years of litigation, Doyle won the $100 million settlement.
Doyle later filed lawsuit against 22 companies including Adobe, Google, Yahoo, Apple, eBay and Amazon in 2009. He alleged the company to use his registered patent without license in their websites. However, in 2012, the jury decided Eolas lawsuit against those companies invalid.
Watch the report from Mashable regarding the case of the patent troll Eolas Technologies below:
