Oh, the ambivalence! In Frankenstein-speak, "$1.1 billion lawsuit bad... ensuing comical press releases good!!" In other words, we were happy for Apple's sake when the court threw out Imatec's infringement claim against Apple for allegedly using patented technology in ColorSync, but man, did we ever miss hearing from Imatec's one-man press nightmare, Dr. Hanoch Shalit. You remember this guy, right? Back when the case was still active, he used to issue six press releases each day-- and that was just before having his morning coffee. If Apple introduced a new iMac, there'd be an Imatec press release reminding people that those new iMacs ship with ColorSync, and that Imatec is suing Apple. If Apple announced a quarterly profit, there was Hanoch with a press release about how that money would soon be Imatec's. If Steve caught a cold, you guessed it-- press release, probably noting that Apple's CEO was clearly being divinely smitten for infringing patents.

Well, after the case was thrown out, Imatec sort of collapsed in on itself, with good ol' Hanoch departing the organization with a healthy half-mil in severance pay and all his image-processing intellectual property, such as it was. So what became of Hanoch's last hurrah, in which he issued a press release basically insulting the judge who ruled against him and announcing his plans to appeal the court's decision? We've long wondered if the Hanochless Imatec continued the appeals process, or if it just crumbled into dust. (The company's old web site no longer works, so for all we knew, "Imatec Lite" had just plain fallen off the face of the earth.)

But here comes faithful viewer Jeff Richardson to the rescue, who noticed an article over at Law.com about the case. Evidently Imatec and/or Hanoch did continue the appeals process-- and the Appeals Court just smacked it down again. Siding with the original judge's decision completely, the Appeals Court ruled that, "having properly concluded that Dr. Shalit did not own the rights to the patent, the district court correctly concluded that both he and Imatec lacked standing to bring this infringement suit." Meaning, bye-bye appeal-- and a second bittersweet farewell to Hanoch, as well.

Speaking of Hanoch, we were especially tickled finally to hear some details about why he lost his case so completely. Apparently Apple's lawyers managed to find "an agreement between Shalit and a company he once worked for which ascribed rights to the technology to the company." Yes, folks, all that noise over a potential $3.3 billion loss for Apple (if treble damages had been awarded, as Imatec was seeking), and Shalit never even owned the patents in question in the first place. Man, we miss that guy!