If Friedman decides eBay has not designed around the patent, MercExchange could collect "hundreds of millions" of dollars in ongoing infringement fees, said Gregory Stillman, MercExchange's lawyer and a partner in the Hunton & Williams LLP law firm.

"The functionality of 'buy it now' is exactly the same as it was four years ago," Stillman said Monday.

MercExchange spokesman Michael Caputo called eBay a "rank infringer."

An eBay representative wasn't immediately available for comment.

MercExchange may appeal the district court decision on the injunction, Stillman said. That would continue a long battle between the two companies, one in which the U.S. Supreme Court has gotten involved.

The district court originally denied MercExchange's request for a permanent injunction, but the Virginia company appealed the ruling.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit took the case and granted MercExchange an injunction, continuing the court's long-standing practice of granting injunctions in nearly every patent infringement case. But the Supreme Court, in May 2006, overturned the appeals court ruling, saying judges must weigh several factors before granting an injunction.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to Friedman to determine whether an injunction was warranted.

Friedman ruled that the injunction request did not pass the four-part test now required by the Supreme Court. MercExchange has tried to sell patent licenses and its patents to other companies, suggesting that monetary damages are adequate, Friedman wrote.

Since the original judgment in the case, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has also issued two interim findings that the MercExchange patent is invalid, Friedman wrote.

A permanent injunction would also hurt the public, the judge wrote.

"EBay is a multi-billion dollar corporation whose online marketplace brings together tens of millions of buyers and sellers around the world and eBay unquestionably has a substantial impact on the United States' economy," he wrote. "In contrast, MercExchange is a company with two employees that work out of their homes and appear to specialize in litigation and obtaining royalties based on the threat of litigation."

The district court's ruling on the injunction isn't surprising, given the Supreme Court decision and district court's original ruling, said Sarah King, a partner in Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin PC's intellectual property litigation group in San Francisco.

But the ruling is part of a "creeping sea change" in patentholder rights since the Supreme Court ruling, she said. "No longer will patentholders necessarily have the power to shut a company down for patent infringement," she said. "It really removes from the quiver of the patentholder a very powerful arrow that they hold against infringers."

In a dissenting opinion, one justice wrote that today's decision "rewards Dr. Woo's obnoxious behavior and allows him to profit handsomely," while also calling the original incident involving his assistant "intentional offensive and likely tortuous conduct."

Woo will get $750,000 in damages, attorney fees, and is also reimbursed the $250,000 that he paid to settle the original lawsuit with his employee.

The eight-year legal jumble can all be traced back to a pot-bellied pig named Walter, owned by Woo's surgical assistant. The assistant, who worked for Woo for five years, talked frequently about Walter in the office, and about the abandoned pot-bellied pigs that she cared for, according to court documents.

Woo made several remarks, including how he would like to barbecue Walter, documents said. He went on a boar-hunting trip and brought back pictures of a dead boar to show the assistant. Woo claimed that his comments were just part of a "friendly working environment," documents said.

But then he pulled out the fake boar tusks.

The assistant needed to have two teeth replaced with implants, and Woo told her he could do it, documents said.

Woo prepared a pair of fake boar tusks and, while his assistant was sedated for the procedure, Woo removed the oxygen mask, inserted the tusks in her mouth and took photos without her consent. He later developed the pictures and showed them to employees, and later one of his other employees gave them to the assistant as a birthday present. The assistant was stunned.

So stunned that she filed a lawsuit with several complaints against the dentist, including invasion of privacy, infliction of emotional distress and medical negligence.

Woo sought defense with his insurer, Fireman's, who would not defend him because his actions did not fall under "dental services," documents said.

Woo settled with his assistant for $250,000 and then took his insurer to court. In June 2003, the King County Superior Court jury awarded the dentist $750,000, but that was overturned two years later by the state Court of Appeals, although it left the $250,000 settlement intact.

A court has ruled that the government of California is within its rights to prohibit Adidas from selling kangaroo-hide soccer shoes in the state.

U.S. law does not pre-empt a state law banning importation and sale of kangaroo products in California, the California State Supreme Court ruled Monday. It reversed two lower-court decisions that sided with Adidas's argument that the California law could not foreclose U.S. provisions that allow the use of the Australian kangaroo hides.

Adidas recently began one of its largest U.S. advertising campaigns. The promotions feature David Beckham, who recently joined the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team.

"Although Adidas makes some shoes using kangaroo leather, a common practice in our industry, Adidas does not make shoes from any endangered or threatened kangaroo species," a company spokeswoman, Andrea Corso, said in a statement. "We are confident that we will prevail in this matter."

Beckham's soccer shoe is made with a synthetic leather upper, Corso said.

The United States lifted a ban in 1981 on imports of leather from the three kangaroo species that Adidas uses for the shoes. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1995 took those species off its endangered or threatened species list, effectively ending the U.S. government's involvement in the matter, the California court said.

The case was brought by Viva, the Vegetarian International Voice for Animals. The California Supreme Court sent the case back to the appeals court to decide whether Viva had standing to bring the case under California law and whether the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibited California from trying to regulate kangaroo imports, said an Adidas lawyer, Martin Fineman.

A skeptical Alameda County judge ordered garbage hauler Waste Management on Tuesday to return to court next week to prove it is abiding by his order to collect all the trash in Oakland or face big fines for scores of missed pickups.

Superior Court Judge Richard Keller, at a hearing in his Fremont courtroom, said Oakland officials provided evidence that as many as 300 customers a day have not been receiving garbage service despite his order last week that the company truck away all the city's trash.

"That's more than ... just a matter of a couple of missed pickups," Keller said to Waste Management lawyers who told him the company is covering all of its routes. "All I'm saying is there's a certain amount of common sense that comes into play here in all this, and then there's gilding the lily."

Keller scheduled a hearing for Aug. 3 to determine whether the company should be held in contempt of his July 19 order -- which could subject the firm to fines of $2,500 per day for each of the hundreds of pickups the city says have been missed since then.

Meanwhile, representatives from Waste Management and the Teamsters union, along with Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and a federal mediator, spent 10 hours Tuesday trying to work out a deal and planned to resume negotiations at 11 a.m. today in Oakland. A contract agreement would end the company's lockout of nearly 500 union garbage haulers that began July 2.

Dellums said the two sides made progress in their talks Tuesday.

"We have reached agreement on several of the outstanding issues,'' he said Tuesday night, declining to provide details. "I'm actually feeling very good because there was substantial progress. I believe the remaining issues can be resolved -- that's not to say they're not difficult issues."

Since July 19, city officials said they have received 3,000 complaints about spotty trash, recycling and yard waste pickups, while Waste Management officials have said they resumed regular weekly pickups in Oakland and other East Bay areas affected by the lockout.

"Each day it goes on, it becomes more and more frustrating," said Dellums, who described the negotiations as tedious and difficult. Waste Management has hired hundreds of temporary workers to pick up trash in Oakland and other East Bay communities and has added extra drivers and trucks to East Bay routes since Keller's order last week, Waste Management attorney John Lynn Smith said at Tuesday's hearing.

Smith said the company has 117 drivers on routes in Oakland, a number equal to the number of Teamster drivers in the city before the lockout, which came three days after the union's contract with the company expired.

"We'll continue to move forward to make sure people get service," Waste Management spokeswoman Monica Devincenzi said after the hearing, adding that on Saturday temporary drivers will go back over routes to gather any missed pickups from the week. "We truly apologize for any inconvenience we've caused our customers. We're trying our best to get it done."

But Deputy Oakland City Attorney Kandis Westmore said the city has received 200 to 300 complaints about missed pickups each day since the judge's order -- evidence, she said, that the company is not abiding by the order.

The city will have to prove in court that Waste Management has willfully failed to pick up garbage, Keller said. The city's efforts could be undermined, he said, by company claims that Teamster picketers at the firm's office in East Oakland have delayed replacement drivers on their routes by up to three hours.

Keller acknowledged that the potential fines, while substantial, might not motivate the multimillion-dollar corporation. "It's like swatting a gnat off the back of an elephant," he said.

City Attorney John Russo has said the city could hire another hauler to pick up trash in Oakland, but a spokeswoman for City Administrator Deborah Edgerly said Tuesday that city officials will continue efforts to compel Waste Management to comply with the terms of its franchise agreement.

"The performance standards are clearly spelled out -- pick up the trash," Karen Boyd said.

The company's contract with Teamsters Local 70 expired June 30, and Waste Management locked out its drivers in what company officials described as a pre-emptive move against a rumored Teamsters strike.

Union officials said their members did not intend to strike and planned to work while union and company officials negotiated a new contract.

Oakland, Emeryville, Albany, Hayward, Newark and part of San Leandro, along with unincorporated areas of Alameda County, including Castro Valley and San Lorenzo, are affected by the lockout.

Shannon Houchin, a former police officer with the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office in West Memphis, Ark., pleaded guilty today in federal court in Little Rock to a felony civil rights charge.

During his guilty plea, Houchin admitted that he abused his authority as a police officer when, in May 2006, he unnecessarily assaulted an arrestee while at the Crittenden County Detention Facility.

Houchin faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

“It is unacceptable for law enforcement officials to willfully abuse those committed to their custody,” said Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The overwhelming majority of correctional officers dispatch their difficult duties with honor and professionalism. The Justice Department will aggressively prosecute those who cross the line and violate federal law.”

The Civil Rights Division is committed to the vigorous enforcement of every federal criminal civil rights statute, such as laws that prohibit the willful use of excessive force or other acts of misconduct by law enforcement officials. In fiscal year 2006, nearly 50 percent of the cases brought by the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division involved such prosecutions. Since fiscal year 2001, the Division has convicted 50 percent more defendants for excessive force and official misconduct than in the preceding six years.

Today’s plea resulted from the investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Rights Division attorneys Christine Dunn and Karen Ruckert handled the case for the Justice Department.