Kudos to online retailer Newegg and its Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng on the Federal Circuit decision handed down last week holding that three patents covering basic online checkout technology were invalid. [PDF] The decision reversed the judgment of the ED Texas trial court that the patents were not invalid and vacated the patent infringement judgment entered in favor of NPE Soverain and against Newegg by the trial court.

Check out Joe Mullin’s arstechnia post “How Newegg crushed the ‘shopping cart’ patent and saved online retail” for a full and insightful accounting of the litigation, which highlight’s Newegg’s commitment to never, ever settling with NPEs. CLO Cheng fleshed out the strategy to reporter Mullin:

We basically took a look at this situation and said, ‘This is bullshit,’ . . . We saw that if we paid off this patent holder, we’d have to pay off every patent holder this same amount. This is the first case we took all the way to trial. And now, nobody has to pay Soverain jack squat for these patents.

Without a doubt, Newegg and its counsel have achieved a very big legal victory. Soverain previously received a $40 million in settlement from Amazon, an additional undisclosed settlement from The Gap, and, while the Newegg appeal was pending, obtained a patent infringement jury verdict of $18 million from Avon and Victoria’s Secret. Due to the broad scope of online shopping technology allegedly covered by the asserted patents, InternetRetailer.com’s researcher Mark Brohan described Newegg’s decision to go to trial on Soverain’s claims (and after the other six online retailers named as defendants settled out) as creating “the mother of all patent battles.”

Yet even as we applaud both Newegg’s principled stand and the victory realized through the implementation of this strategy, we find ourselves asking whether the costs outweigh the benefits.Continue Reading Free Riding and Other Costs to Newegg of “Crushing” NPE Soverain