According to a Wired report, a federal jury in the supposedly software-patent friendly US District Court in East Texas recently sided with Web firms like Google and Amazon, in a patent-infringement lawsuit filed by Eolas Technologies.

It was after deliberating on Eolas' complaint for a few hours that the federal jury finally struck down Eolas' claims of ownership to patents pertaining to `Interactive Web,' which includes features like online video streaming and search suggestions, among others.

The jury said that Eolas' claims to the patents in question - the validity of which was also being challenged by some other companies including Yahoo, Adobe Systems, CDW, JCPenney, and Staples - were invalid.

In its complaint, originally filed in 2009, Eolas had claimed that its two software patents 7,599,985 and 5,838,906 covered a large part of what now is an essential part of the present-day Web. The legal proceedings initiated by Eolas had prompted firms like Office Depot, Rent-A-Center, Oracle, Playboy, and a few other to work out a settlement with Eolas over the mentioned patents.

Along with the University of California, which co-owns the mentioned patents, Eolas had been contending that Web companies owe it approximately $600 million in royalties for allegedly infringing on the patents which were awarded to Eolas' founder Michael Doyle, and two co-inventors, in the year 1998.

Commenting on the jury's verdict in the closely-observed patent-infringement lawsuit, a Google spokesperson said that the Internet search giant was satisfied with the ruling, which "affirms our assertion that the claims are without merit."