For hundreds of companies, a court ruling Friday against inventor Jerome Lemelson was akin to the house dropping on the wicked witch in "The Wizard of Oz."
Nevada U.S. District Judge Philip Pro concluded that Lemelson's estate can't enforce 14 patents relating to machine vision and bar-code technologies because the prolific inventor and his estate waited too long to pursue the alleged infringers.
Details here from The Recorder via Law.com.