ArrivalStar is one of the most active patent trolls, having filed hundreds of lawsuits in recent years. Most of its suits were filed against medium- and large-sized companies, but this particular troll stood out from the rest because it also chose to sue public transit agencies. The company got an $80,000 settlement from Seattle (King County) and won similar payments from Chicago's Metra system, Boston, and other locales.

The threats kept adding up, and eventually the transit agencies struck back. Two months ago, the American Public Transit Association (APTA), working together with the Public Patent Foundation, filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate ArrivalStar's patents. It promised to be the first real test of ArrivalStar's patented technology.

Now APTA and ArrivalStar have settled their case. It's a win for APTA, since ArrivalStar agreed to stop targeting its members or any vendors that serve its members.

“This is a good day for the public transportation industry and now public transportation agencies and businesses can move forward with innovative technology without threat of baseless litigation,” said APTA President Michael Melaniphy.

Unfortunately, ArrivalStar's many targets in the private sector are going to have to continue to grapple with the litigious patent-holding company. ArrivalStar has never taken its patents anywhere near a trial, and hardly any of its lawsuits even go beyond early stages of litigation. With today's settlement, ArrivalStar can continue avoiding any rigorous testing of its patents.

The APTA lawsuit had challenged 13 ArrivalStar patents all related to vehicle tracking. The oldest ones are patents number 5,657,010; 6,317,060; and 6,411,891. They have priority dates stretching back as early as 1993.

PubPat founder Dan Ravicher explained that he can't force ArrivalStar into court if the company agrees not to sue, because "there's no longer a case or controversy to satisfy standing requirements," he explained in an e-mail exchange with Ars today. "I'd love to do work that others can free-ride upon, but I can't pursue a case in court without a client that's being injured."

According to the patent-holding company's own mythology, its founder, Martin Jones, was working on a pre-Internet telephone-based system that notified parents when school buses were coming to pick up their kids back in the 1990s. Today, Jones' lawyers claim in lawsuits that he's owed royalties on practically any system of vehicle-tracking in the world. Jones has wrested fees from huge airlines, freight companies, and even small companies that do things like make transit-tracking apps.

ArrivalStar is the second notorious patent troll to find itself in retreat this week. Yesterday, MPHJ Technology, which has threatened many businesses with its patents that cover networked scanners, agreed to stop targeting Minnesota businesses after it was confronted by that state's attorney general.