Link: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/02/valve-wins-legal-battle-against-patent-troll-rothschild-and-associated-companies/

The case of Valve versus Leigh Rothschild and all associated companies has come to an end, with Valve coming out the clear winner in this one.

For those unfamiliar, Rothschild has a lot of patents and has a habit of going after various companies to try and get money out of them. They even tried to sue GNOME, as just one appropriate example here.

It sure took a while for this situation to be solved, with a first case being originally filed in 2022 from Display Technologies LLC (a patent holding company from Rothschild). The patent in question, US8856221B2, covers a "System and method for storing broadcast content in a cloud-based computing environment". This caused Valve to file their own suit in 2023 which targeted Rothschild directly, various companies and even their lawyers.

The story of this patent troll is classic example of flying too close to the sun. They had their scam working and were making great money from it with no one pushing back. Then they got lazy and greedy and it looks like it may flatten them entirely.

I hope they get flattened, digital patents should not be legal - especially vague ones that can be applied across dozens of different categories.