TOMTOM NV, Toyota Motor Corp. and five other companies won patent-infringement lawsuits filed by Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. over computerized map-viewing systems.

Two patents owned by the research publisher were found to be invalid by a federal judge who threw out the claims. US district judge Lee Yeakel in Austin, Texas, said in his ruling that the patents covered ideas that were already publicly known more than a year before the date of the Encylopaedia Britannica inventions.

Encyclopaedia Britannica’s patents relate to an interactive mapping system that displays information about sites, a feature it uses in its digital encyclopedias. The company claimed the inventions were used in global-positioning systems that display, for instance, icons on maps to show the location of gas stations or points of interest and was demanding patent royalties.

“We were happy to win the ruling and even happier with the cost-effective way we dealt with this case,” TomTom lawyer Lauren Degnan of Fish & Richardson in Washington said.

The judge ruled on the baseline validity question before the two sides spent time and money questioning witnesses and gathering information, Degnan said.

The request to invalidate the patents was first filed by Amsterdam-based TomTom, Europe’s largest maker of car-navigation equipment, and closely held global positioning system (GPS)-maker Magellan Navigation Inc. of Santa Clara, California.

The decision also affects Garmin Ltd., the largest maker of navigation devices in the US, and Toyota, the world’s largest automaker. They sought to have the claims against them dismissed.

Also getting decisions in their favor were car-audio equipment maker Alpine Electronics Inc.; Denso Corp., Japan’s biggest auto-parts maker; and American Honda Motor Co., a unit of Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co.

“This closes the book on their attempt to enforce these patents,” Alpine lawyer Gary Ropski of Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione in Chicago said today in a phone interview. “It’s a terrific victory. It was in an area where Encyclopaedia Britannica does not compete.”

Lawyers with Chicago-based Encyclopaedia Britannica and the other companies that were sued either had no immediate comment or didn’t immediately return messages.

Closely held Encyclopaedia Britannica sued the companies in 2006 and 2007, demanding cash compensation for use of its inventions plus an order that would bar further infringement of its patents.

The company claimed it should be given credit for coming up with the inventions in 1989, when it first filed for patent protection. In his decision, Yeakel said that, for administrative reasons relating to how applications are processed, Encyclopaedia Britannica was considered to have filed the applications in 1994, more than a year after it made the invention public.

The court last year invalidated a third patent owned by the company. That case is on appeal.

Encyclopaedia Britannica is the oldest continuously published reference work in the English language, beginning as a three-volume set first published in 1768 in Scotland. Bootlegged versions were owned by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, according to the company’s website.

The company, now primarily a digital publisher, sells a 32-volume set. It is a unit of closely held Encyclopaedia Britannica Holding SA, based in Luxembourg and controlled by Jacob E. Safra. (Bloomberg)