Late last week, Canon U.S.A. announced that it reached an agreement with MPHJ Technology Investments “to protect Canon customers from MPHJ’s patent infringement allegations directed toward end-user systems using network addressable document scanning equipment and software.” MPHJ acquired a number of patents (U.S. patent 6,185,590, 6,771,381, 7,477,410, 7,986,426, and one pending patent) and then, in