A patent troll that sued several small companies offering "cybersex" products has backed away from its largest target, the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

TZU Technologies filed six lawsuits in June, mostly against manufacturers of computing-enabled sex toys. One of the defendants, Holland Haptics, was a Kickstarter project whose product, the "Frebble," allows for a more tame form of interaction, proffering a kind of simple online "hand-holding." TZU said both Holland Haptics and Kickstarter were infringing its patent, numbered 6,368,268.

Kickstarter refused to pay a "nuisance" settlement demand, preferring instead to litigate the case on principle. On the same day Kickstarter was going to file its response to the lawsuit, TZU offered a "walkaway" settlement in which Kickstarter would pay it nothing, as long as it signed a confidentiality agreement. Again, Kickstarter refused.

"This is a standard patent troll suit, the kind that, unfortunately, we have faced in the past," said Kickstarter general counsel Michal Rosenn in an interview with Ars. "We’re fortunate to be in a position where we can afford to take these suits to court."

Once TZU and its lawyers at the Southern California-based Cotman IP group realized Kickstarter fully intended to fight it out in court, it dropped the lawsuit. The case has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can't be re-filed.

The case against Holland Haptics has not been dropped, although the Amsterdam-based startup hasn't been served with any court papers yet. Holland Haptics didn't immediately respond to an interview request from Ars. "They're a tiny team, with very little money," said Rosenn, who has been in touch with the project creator.

The idea that patent trolls and their lawyers may be scanning the kind of extremely small-time entrepreneurs that use Kickstarter is disturbing, to say the least.

"This is a huge problem," Rosenn acknowledges. "It's exactly small businesses that are most vulnerable, because most can't afford to litigate. Many businesses get liquidated because of patent trolls."

Kickstarter is one of many tech companies that has sent executives to Washington DC to meet with members of Congress and encourage them to pass patent reform. For the second Congress in a row, a serious patent reform proposal is being debated, but it hasn't passed yet.

Patent laws allow a patent-holder to sue anyone who makes, uses, or sells a patented device without permission, and there are also laws barring contributory infringement, which will likely continue to drag Kickstarter into patent disputes as it grows in popularity.

The TZU patent was invented by Warren Sandvick, president of a Texas company called HasSex, which was also a non-practicing entity with no products. Filed in 1998, and granted in 2002, the patent lays broad claim to a remotely controlled sexual "stimulation system," one version of which involved a "second user interface" located remotely from the first. TZU Technologies' other five patent suits are all still pending in the Central District of California.

Kickstarter has been named in patent cases over projects launched on its platform three times: once in a dispute between warring 3D printer companies, once in the TZU case, and most recently in a case where an independent inventor sued over bags that can recharge electrical devices. That last case, in which the inventor sued Ralph Lauren, Leoht Inc., and Kickstarter, was filed in August and is pending in the Southern District of Texas.