A federal jury in Delaware ruled last week that Atlanta-based EarthLink had not infringed on a series of patents relating to the installation of high-speed asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) computer connections held by a Virginia company, ending nearly four years of complex litigation.
Inline Connection Corp., sued EarthLink and America Online on April 12, 2002, according to court documents, alleging violations of four (later reduced to three) of its patents. The suit claimed that techniques Inline developed for allowing telephone and data transmission across the same telephone lines had been improperly adopted by the Internet companies selling user-installed ADSL systems.
