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If you thought that the issue of whether a patent covered the use of a microprocessor could only concern the computer or semiconductor industry, think again. High tech has extended its reach to zapping rats (literally).

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Such were the aspirations of Bob Noe, the founder of Agrizap--maker of the patented Rat Zapper, a trap for dispatching pests through electrocution. Agrizap's Rat Zapper, which is about the size of a shoebox, is powered by four AA batteries, and is sold online for about $40 at RatZapper.com.

The slightly larger Rat Zapper Ultra uses D-cell batteries which, according to the Website, enables it to kill "even bigger, badder rats and mice." In the event of serious infestation, or for those with an overdeveloped desire to integrate their equipment, Agrizap also offers the ultimate high-tech equipment including its Battle Station command post and radio-monitoring equipment for use with its traps.

Remember that Nigerian company headed by a convicted felon that sued the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project for patent infringement?

Well, the suit has finally been brought...in a Nigerian court...with $20 million in damages on the table.

The cheekiness is breathtaking.

As Groklaw reports, there is also:

An appeals court has reinstated a patent lawsuit filed against Google over a toolbar feature called AutoLink that provides links to online maps or books on Amazon.com, according to a Bloomberg News report.

Wisconsin-based HyperPhrase Technologies sued Google in 2006 for patent infringement. The case was thrown out a year ago by a district court judge, but this week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit in Washington said the lower court judge had erred in interpreting some of the patents and sent the case back.

However, the appeals court agreed with the lower court ruling on a claim that Google's AdSense did not infringe on HyperPhrase's patents.

Just when you thought its legal troubles were over, Vonage gets involved in another legal squabble with telecommunications equipment maker Nortel Networks.

On Friday, Nortel filed a lawsuit against Vonage claiming that the voice provider has violated nine patents related to its Internet phone service, including features such as 911 and 411 calling and click to call.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, comes in response to a suit Vonage is pursuing against Nortel. In 2004, a company called Digital Packet Licensing sued Nortel for infringing on three of its patents. Vonage acquired Digital Packet Licensing last year and is continuing the lawsuit.

For more than a year, Vonage has been caught up in one patent lawsuit after another. AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon Communications have all sued the company for allegedly violating their patents. In October, Vonage settled its suit with Sprint Nextel for $80 million. Later that month, it settled with Verizon in a deal that could cost the company a maximum of $120 million. And early in November, Vonage was in settlement talks with AT&T in deal that could cost it $39 million over five years.

As for its performance, Vonage is hanging in there, but there are still troubles. It actually reported slightly better-than-expected revenue numbers for the third quarter of 2007, pulling in about $211 million. This was a little better than some analysts on Wall Street had expected; they predicted the company would report $210 million in revenue. But Vonage is still struggling to keep customers it has already won. The company said it had added 78,000 net subscribers in the quarter, increasing the total to more than 2.5 million. But it is still churning or losing a lot of customers. The company reported an average monthly churn rate of 3 percent up from 2.5 percent during the second quarter.

At the end of the day, Vonage has a very tough road ahead. Not only has its reputation been damaged, but the company will be spending a lot of money over the next several years paying off its legal bills. The best thing it can do now is settle this and any other lawsuits quickly, so it can move forward.

Northeastern University has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, claiming the database architecture that Google uses to feed up search results has been misappropriated, according to The Boston Globe.

The lawsuit claims the technology was developed and patented by a company called Jarg in Waltham, Mass., that was co-founded by Northeastern professor Kenneth Baclawski. The patent, owned by the university and licensed to Baclawski, covers a method for sectioning database queries into different portions that are each processed by a different computer.

The lawsuit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which specializes in patent cases.

Update 3 p.m. PT: Google spokesman Jon Murchinson says the lawsuit is without merit.

Two of the world's largest PC makers still can't seem to get along.

Acer is suing Hewlett-Packard again for patent violations. It's an escalation of the battle over the two companies' intellectual property that began earlier this year.

Filed in a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin and with the U.S. Internaional Trade Commission Tuesday, Acer said it is countersuing HP for infringing on its patents related to servers, PCs, and peripheral devices. HP declined to comment on Acer's suit.

HP initiated the fight in March when it sued Acer over five patents involving read/write optical drives, power management in notebooks, and digital bus arrangement. In the lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court and with the International Trade Commission, HP demanded that Acer cease importing its products that infringe on those patents to the U.S.

Less than a month later, HP added four more patents regarding video control and heat management to the suit. Acer struck back in July, saying that HP had violated some of its patents on antenna and DVD-ROM head technology.

The stacks of legal documents flying back and forth come at a time when both companies are hitting their stride. HP has been the reigning No. 1 PC vendor in the world for the past year and continues to report strong quarterly results.

Meanwhile, Acer continues to push its market share higher with double-digit growth here in the U.S. In August, the Taiwanese company announced it would acquire Gateway, which Acer hopes will help put it squarely in front of rival Lenovo as the No. 3 most popular PC maker worldwide. Right now, Acer and Lenovo are running neck and neck.

Microsoft has settled a long-running and expensive lawsuit with Eolas Technologies, a start-up backed by the University of California that alleged Internet Explorer infringed a patent.

"We're pleased to be able to reach an amicable resolution in this long-running dispute with Eolas and the University of California," the company said in a statement Thursday, but declined to share further details. Eolas couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The suit concerned technology that lets Web browsers call up separate applications or plug-ins such as Flash or Java within a Web page. While at the University of California at San Francisco, Eolas Chief Executive Michael Doyle led a team that worked on the technology in the patent, and he spun off Eolas to help commercialize it, according to Eolas. Microsoft revamped Internet Explorer to work around the patent in 2005.

Eolas prevailed earlier in the case, with a court awarding damages of $521 million in 2003 and the U.S. Patent Office upholding the validity of the Eolas patent in 2005. However, a Supreme Court decision this year weakened Eolas' case, and Microsoft said it expected the damages in the case to be revisited.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported the settlement Thursday and published a Monday letter from Eolas Chief Operating Officer Mark Swords to shareholders that said, "We are very pleased that we can now focus our resources on commercializing our existing intellectual property portfolio and developing new technologies." It didn't offer details of the settlement, but said Eolas anticipates paying shareholders a dividend by the end of 2007.

Although Microsoft has been a target in several intellectual property cases, the company affirmed its support for the concept in the computing industry. "Microsoft values intellectual property and believes that the proper protection and licensing of IP enables companies and individuals to obtain a return on investment, sustain business and encourages future innovations and investment in the IT industry," the company said.

CNET News.com staff writers Anne Broache and Tom Krazit contributed to this report.

Microsoft has won a reversal of a $1.5 billion jury verdict against it for infringing on a patent for MP3 technology held by Alcatel-Lucent.

Judge Rudi Brewster of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California tossed out the damages after finding that a jury improperly ruled that Microsoft infringed on one of two patents at issue for MP3 sound technology. The new ruling holds that one of the patents in the case was not actually owned outright by Lucent, and since Microsoft had a license to that particular patent through its co-owner, it's off the hook.

There were two patents at issue in the case over the technology used in MP3 files. One of those patents, the judge ruled Friday, was actually co-owned by AT&T, Lucent's former parent company, and a German company called Fraunhofer, with which Microsoft had a licensing agreement to use the patented technology. This is the opposite of what a jury concluded in February, but Judge Brewster ruled that some of the technology in the patent was developed after Fraunhofer and AT&T signed a joint-development agreement in 1989.

That would give Fraunhofer co-ownership rights to the patent (known as the '080 patent), and the right to license it to Microsoft. Furthermore, it doesn't allow Lucent-Alcatel to sue Microsoft for infringement because Fraunhofer wasn't included in the original suit, the judge ruled.

So, bottom line: Microsoft won't have to pay Lucent-Alcatel $1.5 billion--at least not yet--there could be more appeals in this case. That's a drop in the bucket to Microsoft, but Lucent-Alcatel, which is losing money, probably could have used the cash.

Microsoft was pleased with the ruling, as you might expect. "Today's ruling by the judge reversing the jury's $1.52 billion verdict against Microsoft is a victory for consumers of digital music and a triumph for common sense in the patent system. For the hundreds of companies large and small that rely on MP3 technology, the Court's ruling clarifies that these companies have properly licensed the technology embodied in the '080 patent from its co-owner and industry recognized MP3 licensor--Fraunhofer," the company said in a statement.

Lucent, not so much. "The reversal of the judge's own pre-trial and post-trial rulings is shocking and disturbing,'' Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Mary Ward told Bloomberg. "The jury unanimously agreed with us. We believe their decision should stand."

The first iPhone lawsuit might have been somewhat laughable, but the second one may be a little more serious.

An outfit called SP Technologies has sued Apple over the touch-screen keyboard at the heart of the iPhone, claiming Apple is infringing on a patent held by SP Technologies for a similar keyboard. AppleInsider dug up the SP patent filing from 2000, which claims the company developed a "method of providing a user interface for receiving information from a user using a user immutable graphical keyboard linked to an input area."

Apple was sued last week by a company claiming a patent on touch-screen keyboards.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Patent suits, of course, are a dime a dozen, and Apple's not exactly the first company to ever use a touch-screen style input method. But this one will probably require more effort to defend than the iPhone battery suit filed a few weeks ago. The suit was filed Thursday in Tyler, Texas, which has become the destination of choice for patent suits these days.

An Apple representative did not immediately return a call seeking comment, but it's unlikely Apple would have much to say at this stage.