Since 2008, Spangenberg and his company TQP have launched suits against hundreds of firms, claiming that their use of a common cryptographic protocol in the HTTPS-encrypted portions of their web properties violates the patent invented by Jones and acquired by TQP in 2006.

FORBES: Meet The Texas Lawyer Suing Hundreds Of Companies For Using Basic Web Encryption

The new protocol also offers enhanced security, by providing a cryptographic means of checking that a particular packet really does come from the machine it claims to.

ECONOMIST: Internet protocol