All good things must come to an end, and from what we gather the global patent war between Research in Motion and Visto has been a very good thing to the lawyers involved. On Thursday, both companies announced that they had agreed to settle all litigation over RIM's Blackberry patents, with RIM paying Visto $267.5 million. In exchange RIM gets access to all Visto patents and acquires some of its intellectual property.

Citing inadequate disclosures, Delaware Chancery Court Vice-Chancellor Leo Strine briefly enjoined the deal. But PLATO and Thoma Bravo tweaked the merger proxy in time to get voting underway on schedule.

HTC and its lawyers at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner picked up some much-needed ammunition in their infringement litigation with Apple: nine patents that belonged to Google until only last week.

Will what's been billed as the largest and most complex prosecution of environmental crimes in history be derailed by alleged prosecutorial misconduct? A hearing Friday may answer the question.

A federal judge in Manhattan certified a global class of investors who sank billions into Fairfield Greenwich funds that fed Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. But the judge excluded investors in 25 countries, singling out nations ranging from France, Switzerland, Israel, and China to the tiny islands of Picairn and Tokelau.