On Wednesday the company appealed a ruling that its CEO and two of its vice presidents must testify in person at a trial over the safety of its anti-smoking drug Chantix. According to Pfizer, the executives have already provided 16 hours of deposition testimony that was videotaped by the plaintiffs' attorneys.

You would think the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has plenty to do without writing densely reasoned 20-page opinions that are entirely moot. But, apparently not.

An East Texas federal jury concluded Friday that Barnes & Noble didn't infringe a patent owned by Alexsam Inc., a patent holding company that sued B&N and six other major retailers over their use of gift card technology.

Multidistrict litigation over alleged price-fixing in the market for liquid crystal displays has been a messy and expensive slog for LCD manufacturers. But not every defendant has had to shell out big bucks in the LCD MDL.

TiVo and its lawyers at Irell & Manella and McKool Smith have secured yet another settlement in their patent litigation campaign against the digital television industry. The latest TiVo foe to cut a deal is Google's Motorola Mobility unit, which faced a jury trial next week in East Texas.

According to Zusha Elinson at The Recorder, Verizon agreed to pay Intellectual Ventures as much as $350 million in a 2008 deal. Now Verizon is using one of IV's patents to strike back at TiVo in a patent fight in an East Texas federal court.

The latest stage in long-running litigation over alleged price-fixing in the market for LCD screens is getting underway in San Francisco this week, with Best Buy and Eastman Kodak heading to trial against a trio of LCD screen manufacturers.