A U.S. District Judge in San Jose, California, has turned the tables on the lawyers suing some giant tech companies.

Federal judge Lucy Koh found that a lawsuit that accused AOL and Microsoft of conspiring on a bogus patent auction with the help of Goldman Sachs was "frivolous" and "utterly lacking" in facts. Koh went one step further beyond dismissing the case, holding that the lawyers who had been "harassing" the tech companies with the frivolous lawsuit deserved to be punished--they have to pick up AOL's legal tab and other punishments are set to follow, which could include fines and disciplinary measures.

According to news reports, the case in question came about after AOL sold a portfolio of patents at auction to Microsoft for over $1 billion in April 2012, causing AOL’s share price to soar. One month later, the Rosenfarb Law Firm hit AOL with a class-action lawsuit that alleged the auction was a “sham” and that the two companies had decided to do the deal months earlier.

The court found that neither a Reuters news story pointing to a conspiracy nor a single, pseudonymous blog post supported the Rosenfarb Law Firm's suit.

—Source: money.cnn.com