Earlier this month the U.S Supreme Court weighed in with its opinion on patent infringement lawsuits. According to Forbes magazine, “The U.S. Supreme Court has tipped the balance in patent disputes ever so slightly toward the users of patented technology and away from inventors, owners of intellectual property and the hated “patent trolls”–companies that make money by suing for infringement of patents they own but don’t use.”

Now what does this have to do with you and your company? Well, if you are an inventor or somehow work with patented technology, then it has an immediate effect on your legal recourse dealing with infringement of your patents (see the Forbes’ article for more detail).

This decision really only has an immediate affect on eBay (the defendant in the related lawsuit), however it will affect most future patent infringement lawsuits and how and if there are court-ordered injunctions involved. As the article goes on to state, ‘the ruling doesn’t rule out any court injunction, but does leave it a bit more open to interpretation by the lower courts as to when an injunction is really necessary’ (when the plaintiff is suffering from irreparable harm, due to the continued use of the patent in question).

However, more far-reaching implications involve your day to day business. Do you and/or your employees and collogues use Blackberries, Treos or computers for that matter in your daily lives? A related matter that has been in the news for the last year or two brings this home to many of us. That is, NTP’s lawsuit for patent infringement against Research in Motion (the maker of Blackberry). RIM avoided an injunction in the end, but had to pony up $612 million to NTP. I had never before seen so many users of the “CrackBerry” freaking out like their soul was being ripped from them. Organizations were calling me to create contingency plans and alternative ways of communicating if and when the court ordered RIM to stop all Blackberry service in the U.S. (In fact, I believe the only reason there wasn’t a court injunction is because of the number of federal employees who use the Blackberry and the federal government’s appeal to the court not to end the service.)

So, does your company have a policy in place defining a plan of action if the Intel chip used in all of your servers is found to infringe upon another company’s patent? Or if your productivity software is shown to include patented features which aren’t owned by Microsoft? Scary stuff, I know… (the possibility of having to shut down your business for outside reasons, not the fact that Microsoft doesn’t already own everything.) Well, at least for now, the Supreme Court has given you a bit more time to create a plan. Their decision doesn’t take away the possibility of an injunction, but merely makes it harder for a patent-trolling company to request one successfully and this will allow you to seek alternative processes and products.