Enlarge / A figure from the patent that has been asserted against Intel, Google, and hundreds of other companies providing SSL and TLS on their websites. (credit: USPTO)

Patent-holding company TQP Development made millions claiming that it owned a breakthrough in Web encryption, even though most encryption experts had never heard of the company until it started a massive campaign of lawsuits. Yesterday, the company’s litigation campaign was brought to an end when a panel of appeals judges refused (PDF) to give TQP a second chance to collect on a jury verdict against Newegg.

The TQP patent was invented by Michael Jones, whose company Telequip briefly sold a kind of encrypted modem. The company sold about 30 models before the modem business went bust. Famed patent enforcer Erich Spangenberg bought the TQP patent in 2008 and began filing lawsuits, saying that the Jones patent actually entitled him to royalties on a basic form of SSL Internet encryption. Spangenberg and Jones ultimately made more than $45 million from the patent.

Newegg finally took the TQP patent to a jury trial but lost in 2013 when a jury said Newegg should pay $2.3 million for infringement. But after a long delay, Newegg still won the lawsuit on post-trial motions. US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap agreed with Newegg’s lawyers that because the company’s encryption scheme didn’t change “key values” with each block of data, it couldn’t possibly fit into the description of the Jones patent.