I was reading somewhere ( Business 2.0 or Money or Wired..... its one of them ) and it states

PAYPAL - First Company to reach to the stock market in 1 year and now they are now getting sued for patent that they stole. :)

Paypal was sued for patent infringement BEFORE they launched their IPO and actualy delayed the offering a few weeks in response.

See: http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article/0,1471,8471_970181,00.html

http://www.internetnews.com/fina-news/article/0,,5_975411,00.html

Very interesting given paypal's size and the timing of the suit. The interesting thing with patents is that a very high percent are overturned in courts. That is to say when someoen sues for patent infringement, they risk loosing their patent if the court finds it unfit under the major patent qualification sections 101, 102 and 103

On a side note, paypal has yet to be convicted of anything so if they stole it (or if it was ok or not) is still not yet known.