Kickstarter just had a small victory in a lawsuit filed to shake loose what it considers an attempted patent troll. ArtistShare, a site that was founded in 2000 in order to let fans fund creative projects, had been hoping to get some compensation out of Kickstarter. Instead, the three-year-old Kickstarter took them to court—not what ArtistShare wanted. And last month in a New York court, a judge denied a motion to dismiss filed by ArtistShare.

In the denial of the motion to dismiss, a judge wrote that “there is a sufficient controversy between the parties that is both immediate and real.” That means the court will consider Kickstarter’s request for a definitive judgment on the validity of a crowdfunding patent owned by ArtistShare. Read More