Internet giant Yahoo has been the latest victim in a series of patent infringement cases filed by NCR, a United States based manufacturer of ATMs and holder of some 1500 patents. Its 15 recent claims are brought against key electronic commerce players, claiming infringement of several of their patents governing electronic transactions. Significantly, the patents involve fundamental aspects of e-commerce, and (were a verdict reached) may have spurned thousands of further claims against leading electronic stores.

The patents included "ordering and downloading resources from computeri[s]ed repositories;" a "computer system for management of resources;" and a "mechanism for dependably managing Web synchronization and tracking operations among multiple browsers," each of which it said was infringed by Yahoo in its web portal implementation.

Like AOL/Time Warner - a recent defendant in an NCR patent case - Yahoo settled out of Court, perhaps fearful of what a verdict for NCR might spell. For now, Yahoo appears content to pay a hefty licensing fee, the terms of which were not disclosed.

Indeed!