Clearing its decks, LML Payment Systems, an electronic check processor, settled with First Data, owner of Western Union, Electronic Clearing House, and Nova Information Systems over multiple patents.

Boston Scientific settled with patent troll powerhouse Acacia Research over 5,612,524 for multi-dimensional bar code systems. Numerous other companies have written checks to Acacia for this, leaving only online retailer Stamps.com looking silly as sole defendant.

Cornice settled with Seagate over tiny disk drives. Western Digital had gone after Cornice too with a patent gang of seven, but withdrew its suit shortly after filing; settled?

AU Optronics settled with Honeywell International for Honeywell's LCD patent 5,280,371, joining Samsung, LG. Phillips, and Toshiba.

Xerox copied others in paying off Forgent for its JPEG patent, 4,698,672. The carping has been enormous over this patent, but Forgent has squeezed well over $100 million out of it from scores of companies in one of the most extensive enforcement campaigns in recent U.S. history.