California inventor Paul Heckel last month filed a motion in U.S. District Court in northern California to dismiss a lawsuit against newspapers he alleged were infringing his patents.

Lee Enterprises unit TownNews.com, a Web hosting and design firm, was battling Heckel, who earlier this year filed the suit against almost a dozen newspapers he contended were violating a coding scheme he concocted that governs how Web sites are designed (see Newspapers & Technology, May 2003).

Heckel claimed newspapers that display abstracts of full stories that comprise multiple print columns violate his patents. The technique is a popular method to tease Web site visitors to read further.

Heckel claimed he moved to dismiss the suit because of unspecified problems with the structure and language of the original filing.

“We’re going to continue to vigorously enforce these patents,” Heckel said. “There are no fundamental defects that would preclude their enforcement, perhaps even against these same papers (named in the suit) in the future.”

He also said that certain aspects of the way the lawsuit was presented were causing him to have it withdrawn.

“If I had been a much more critical editor of the lawsuit as it was written, it might never have gone forward.”

In addition to the Davis (Calif.) Enterprise and the Shawano (Wis.) Leader, newspapers hosted by TownNews.com, Heckel’s suit also named the San Mateo (Calif.) Daily Journal and the Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as defendants. Another defendant, The Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville, altered its Web site because of the filing. Only one daily, the Gettysburg (Pa.) Times, purchased a license.