The Supreme Court accepted an appeal by eBay Inc. in a closely watched patent case on Monday and agreed to revisit the rules under which courts grant injunctions against a company found to be infringing another's patent.
A federal court jury in Norfolk, Va., found in 2003 that eBay, the online auction house, was violating three patents owned by MercExchange, a small company in Great Falls, Va. The jury assessed more than $25 million in damages.
But Judge Jerome B. Friedman of Federal Disrict Court, noting that MercExchange "exists solely to license its patents or sue to enforce its patents, and not to develop or commercialize them," refused to issue an injunction that would have barred eBay from continuing to use the patented methods in its Web operations.
