Nice timing, Acacia Research Corporation. The mother of all patent trolls patent acquisition, development and licensing company, which was profiled in depth by BusinessWeek just two days ago, this morning announced that it has been awarded a total of $12.4 million in a patent infringement case against Yahoo.
On May 15th, 2009, a federal court jury decided that Yahoo's messenger program with IMVironments ¿ which revolves around interactive backgrounds that users can add to IM conversations ¿ infringes US Patent Number 6,205,432, filed by a trio of inventors and published back in 2001.