More than four years after it launched its first waves of lawsuits, the world's biggest "patent troll" has won its first victory in a jury trial.

Late Friday, a Delaware jury ordered Symantec to pay $17 million to Intellectual Ventures, the Washington-based "invention marketplace" created by ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, which boasts more than 30,000 patent assets.

In its verdict [PDF], the jury found that Symantec had infringed two US patents, numbered 5,987,610 and 6,073,142. A third patent, 6,460,050, was found to be not infringed.

The complaint [PDF], filed in 2010, accuses Symantec's Brightmail Gateway and Web Gateway of infringing the '142 patent. That patent was filed in 1997 by Utah's Park City Group and essentially describes a system for distributing e-mail according to a set of predetermined "business rules."

The '610 patent originated with Ameritech, later bought by AT&T. The '050 patent was filed in 1999 by two columnists for computer magazine InfoWorld, Brooks Talley and Mark Pace.

While jurors sided with Intellectual Ventures, they awarded the patent holder less than six percent of the $299 million its lawyers sought, according to a Symantec spokesperson. The verdict form indicates the company was also asking for ongoing royalty payments, which the jury rejected.

"We are pleased the verdict came back for substantially less than the amount that Intellectual Ventures was seeking, and are considering our options to reduce the damages even further," the spokesperson said via e-mail.

In a statement, IV expressed gratitude to the jury for upholding the patents' validity. "We remain committed to defending inventor rights and protecting the interests of our investors and customers," said IV's head of litigation, Melissa Finocchio.

The same patents were used by IV to sue several other companies. Only Symantec and Trend Micro failed to settle. Trend Micro has a trial scheduled for May.

This isn't the first Intellectual Ventures jury trial, but it's the first one in which the jury reached a verdict. A trial last year against Motorola Mobility ended in a mistrial when jurors couldn't reach unanimous agreement. That case is set to be retried in Delaware next month.

IV was originally created as a "patent defense fund," getting investment cash from big Silicon Valley companies like Google, Apple, and Cisco. Soon, IV moved its focus to patent enforcement, and the firm is generally disliked in Silicon Valley.

The company claims it has received more than $3 billion in licensing revenue, most of which it was able to garner without filing lawsuits. In 2010, it began initiating litigation and has filed more than 50 lawsuits to date.