When at first (and second, and third) you don't succeed, sue. According to the news this morning, that's IBM's strategy. International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) filed two lawsuits against Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), claiming that Amazon was violating five of its patents, including those for technology that provides customer recommendations, advertising, and the way data is catalogued.

Not only had IBM tried to negotiate license fees with Amazon -- which Big Blue says everyone else simply pays -- but it had tried "over a dozen times" with zero response from the internet retailer.

Has Jeffrey Bezos lost his marbles? No media outlet was able to garner a response from the company at this early hour on the West Coast. But it's certainly well-known that Bezos has a history of staking his claim, but big, in the world of IP -- most recently, demanding license fees from everyone who tried to copy their one-click ordering system (I feel I should put "copy" in quotes as many pundits and lawsuit subjects believe there is significant prior art here, which the US Patent & Trademark Office plans to soon review).

In my knowledge of the IP world, IBM's ownership isn't much challenged here. The customer needs prediction algorithms are used by many different companies and taught in statistical marketing courses. While Amazon.com's use of them is considered smart, I've never heard claim that it's of the company's own design. Is Amazon.com a wronged innovator, or is the company's management just playing dirty pool?

In a day marked by a massive sell-off and a lawsuit that could potentially delay release of Microsoft's next-generation operating system, Vista, MSFT stock ticked up a bit, 10 cents to $22.83. After hours? It ticked up still more, hovering around $22.90 and providing evidence that the stock may have found its floor.

Symantec says Microsoft stole its intellectual property with a technology that allows operating systems to handle large quantities of data. The security software company is also claiming breach of contract, and wants Microsoft to remove the technology from Vista before it's sold. The contract is a bit of ancient history, dating back to 1996, and wasn't even part of the Symantec toolkit until last year, when the company acquired Veritas Software Corp.

The market, though, must be standing behind Microsoft in this showdown, as Symantec's stock was down eight cents at the end of the day.

Good news, AOL fans! You won't have to figure out how to work the personalized message feature on your new voicemail system anytime soon!

Klausner Technologies, Inc., a privately owned company founded by Judah Klausner, announced yesterday that it would grant a patent license to AOL, a Time Warner subsidiary. The patent license would enable AOL to continue providing voicemail services to its customers with the technology developed by Klausner. Also, in a bout of unexpected generosity, Klausner Technologies agreed to settle the lawsuit against AOL for infringing its proprietary rights to U.S. Patent No. 5,572,576.

Phew. Good to hear that this dispute was finally settled!

I was beginning to be very concerned about the fate of U.S. Patent No. 5,572,576.

In fact, the whole situation was beginning to remind me of the time that U.S. Patent No. 5,572,575 was in dispute. A very distressing predicament, as you might imagine. All I could do was pace around my apartment in my pajamas and rant mindlessly about intellectual property rights!

But it's good to know that this tricky situation has been resolved in such a way that all parties involved will benefit. Here's to you, Patent No. 5,572,576!

Chinese President Hu Jintao may be ready to crack down on pirates in his country who ignore international copyright and intellectual property protections.  While touring Microsoft's Washington state campus, President Hu told bill Gates, "Because you, Mr. Gates, are a friend of China, I'm a friend of Microsoft." 

President Hu says he deals with Microsoft operating system daily.  Chinese government officials indicated they will crack down on the sales of illegal copies of Microsoft's Windows operating system.  Some computer makers plan to ship more computers with legitimate Windows software installed.  Microsoft will eventually see an increase in sales to China, but analysts believe it will be a long time before there is a significant impact on Microsoft's bottom line.

After touring Microsoft's facilities, Bill Gates hosted a private dinner at his home for President Hu with 100 guests, including executives from Costco Wholesale Corp., Weyerhaeuser Co., Boeing and Amazon.com Inc.  Boeing got the best news from President Hu, who agreed to purchase 80 Boeing 737 jets valued at $5.2 billion.  Well that's list price ... the final deal will probably include some price discounts.

Let's hope President Hu's promise to Microsoft will extend to other holders of U.S. copyright and intellectual property rights- - including other software producers, movie studios, and apparel brands.

Patent trolls are way more scary to U.S. businesses than the kind of trolls you find on message boards, or under bridges. So scary, in fact, that eBay is going all the way to the Supreme Court to argue against their ability to gain injunctions to shut down the businesses of the companies from whom they seek to receive damages.

In this case, eBay has been sued by tiny MercExchange over its Buy-It-Now technology (which eBay says has been altered to avoid infringement, anyway). A jury at the lower court found that eBay was infringing on MercExchange's patent, and then an appeals court upheld the finding, and imposed an injunction barring eBay from using the patented technology.

eBay hopes to make it harder for patent-holders to obtain injunctions (they're "virtually automatic" and can seriously harm a company's livelihood), and to have the court weigh a variety of factors before shutting down a business, for instance, whether or not the patent-holder plans to use its IP for anything other than lawsuits.