Published at LXer:

The case was extraordinary in part because DDR was suing Digital River, an e-commerce company whose business not only pre-dated its patent by more than two years, but thrived in the marketplace; last year Digital River made almost $300 million in revenue. (That includes lines of business that weren't accused in this lawsuit.) By contrast, the dot-com started by the Rosses, Nexchange, was never profitable and went bust in 2000, as soon as it couldn't access more venture capital. Whatever the legal merits of its technology, Digital River had 1,000 clients by the end of 1997; that's more than 20 times the number of merchants Nexchange was working with when it went out of business in 2000.

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