Small east Texas based internet technology innovator Eolas Technologies Inc. turned a lot of heads yesterday after filing patent infringement litigation against nearly two dozen of the biggest and best known companies that do business on the Internet.

Household names like Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Sun Microsystems and YouTube no doubt get sued all the time, but the Eolas litigation carries extra heft because the legal argument has already resulted in a $565 million federal judgment against Microsoft in 2004. That whopper has already withstood two separate reexaminations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

As Dow Jones reports: The latest lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions to keep defendants, which cut across industries to include Citigroup Inc. (C), Blockbuster Inc. (BBI) and J.C. Penny Co. Inc. (JCP), from using technology covered by two Eolas patents. The lawsuit also seeks undisclosed damages. The patent that was the subject of the litigation against Microsoft enables Web browsers to act as platforms for fully interactive embedded applications. Eolas said in a statement that the patent was granted in November 1998 and twice reaffirmed by the patent office, most recently in February. The technology at issue was developed by Eolas Chairman Michael Doyle, while he was at the University of California at San Francisco in the 1990s. The University still owns the patent, but Eolas said it is the exclusive licensee. Eolas said a second patent, issued this month, allows Web sites to add fully interactive embedded applications to their online offerings through the use of plug-in and AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web development techniques.

Reports PCMag: Eolas sued Microsoft in 1999, and won a $521 million settlement in August 2003. Microsoft appealed the following year, but the case was remanded. In 2005, the Supreme Court refused to hear Microsoft's appeal, so Microsoft tried to go through the Patent & Trademark Office. When that also failed, Microsoft and Eolas announced in 2007 that they had agreed upon a settlement, the terms of which were not released.
The companies sued Tuesday are in violation of Eolas patents, the companies said, because they have "web pages and content [that is] interactively presented in browsers" and they use, offer, or sell "software that allows content to be interactively presented in and/or served to browsers."
In Adobe's case, Eolas cited its adobe.com and tv.adobe.com Web sites, as well as Flash and Shockwave. When it comes to Apple, its Apple.com, QuickTime, and Safari products are in violation, Eolas claims, while Google is violating the patents with its Chrome browser.
"We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources. Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair," Dr. Michael D. Doyle, chairman of Eolas, said in a statement.

Mike McKool, head of the national law firm McKool Smith and lead counsel for Eolas, says he hopes the lawsuit will put an end to the widespread unauthorized use of the company's technology patents. "What distinguishes this case from most patent suits is that so many established companies named as defendants are infringing a patent that has been ruled valid by the Patent Office on three occasions," says Mr. McKool.