By Donald Zuhn —

As we reported yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle waded into the patent reform debate over the weekend, appearing to have aligned itself with the "laptop" (or tech) group over the "pill bottle" (or biotech/pharma) group.  In making a case for the tech firms’ position that patent reform is "badly needed," the newspaper’s editorial observed that "[i]n a much-mentioned case, Microsoft was hit with a $1.5 billion penalty when it violated a relatively small patent used in its MP3 software."  However, on Monday, a District Court judge in the Southern District of California put a dent in the Chronicle’s argument by vacating the jury’s record-setting patent infringement award (see Reuters report).