Allen's suit comes as several of the named companies face unrelated litigation alleging misappropriation of intellectual property. Connecticut company XPRT Ventures LLC sued [JURIST report] eBay last month claiming the infringement of six patents for online auctions and payment systems. In April, a federal appeals court found that eBay is not required to actively monitor its website [JURIST report] for the sale of counterfeit goods. The ruling followed shortly after a French court ordered [JURIST report] the company to pay LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) [official website] damages for paying search engines to direct consumers to counterfeit LVMH products. LVMH previously secured a $63 million judgment [JURIST report] in 2008 for failing to prevent the sale of counterfeit luxury goods that infringed on registered designs. Patent holding company NTP filed suit [JURIST report] last month against Apple and Google, amongst other smart phone makers, related to the use of e-mail systems utilizing technology patented by NTP. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) [official website] launched an investigation [JURIST report] in June into allegations made by HTC Corp [corporate website] accusing Apple of patent infringement on certain portable electronic devices. In October, Finnish telecommunications company Nokia [corporate website] filed suit [JURIST report] against Apple alleging that the company infringed 10 of its patents since the first iPhone was released in 2007. The patents cover wireless data transmission, speech coding and security/encryption.