An eight-member federal jury in East Texas deliberated Thursday for just a few hours before concluding that all of Eolas’ asserted claims of ownership to technology allowing access to the interactive web were invalid. That means the three upcoming trials that were scheduled to rule on infringement and damages, for Google, Yahoo and other companies, have been canceled. The eight defendant companies who resisted the lawsuits won’t pay anything to Eolas or its partner, the University of California, for using the web.

Eolas maintained its patents entitled the company to royalty payments from just about anyone running a website with “interactive” features, like rotating pictures or streaming video. The chief issue in the case was whether the first computer program that allowed access to an “interactive web” was created by the little-known Chicago biologist Doyle, who runs Eolas out of Chicago. Or was it one of the web pioneers put on the stand by the defendant companies — such as Pei-Yuan Wei and his Viola browser, or Dave Raggett and his <embed> tag?

This is a big deal, because Eolas basically put its headquarters in East Texas to file lawsuits because they knew the federal district was patent-troll-friendly. Props to that jury for smacking them down. As Ars Technica noted yesterday, this could’ve really screwed the Web. Eolas, which famously won a patent case against Microsoft nine years ago, was already planning to sue a ton of companies, many (including Staples and J.C. Penney) who had nothing to do with interactive Web technologies other than that they used them on their sites.