I just found a great article on ZDNet.
It looks like Altnet, a company that sells music and other digital goods through file-swapping services, finally found a way to strike back at the RIAA after their continued attacks. They purchased the patent for the process of idnetifying files on a p2p network, and on Wednesday, they sued the Recording Industry Association of America for patent infringement. Good for them!
The patent in question is that on using a "hash," or digital fingerprint based on the contents of the file, to identify files on a peer-to-peer network. Personally, I'm not sure that things such as this should be patentable, but given Microsoft's patent on the double click, AOL's patent on instant messenging, and Acacia Media's patent on transmitting compressed audio and video, I suppose that turnabout is fair play - got to fight fire with fire. I'll save my patent insanity rant for another day.