The willy nilly patent granting that seemed pervasive in the past years regarding what many people would regard as non-innovative obvious "inventions" on the internet is starting to come home to roost for the Patent and Trademark Office. The most recent example is an eBay case in which, after having lost a patent infringement suit and its appeal, eBay successfully got the PTO to admit that the patent, owned by MercExchange, shouldn't have been granted in the first place. While only about one in ten patents brought for re-examination to the PTO gets invalidated, it seems that a higher proportion of internet-oriented patents are facing successful scrutiny. Microsoft's recent Eolas case is likely the most expensive case to have been overturned in this fashion of late, effectively cancelling damages that would have run well over half a billion dollars for having put into Internet Explorer the ability to automatically start up rich media that had been downloaded.