Ann: Nearmap made aware of complaint in US District Court (Utah), page-75

Yes, that's correct. You should search and quote the previous patents for similar products and then try and convince the patent examiner that your product is indeed a novel and non-obvious addition to the existing patents. Nearmap was able to do this, which is good.

When a patent is registered the examiner makes an assessment if it is patentable. But registering the patent is not conclusive of this. The US Patent Act does give a presumption of validity to an issued patent. The fact that a patent is registered therefore just puts the burden of proof on to the party arguing that the patent is not valid, so it does help Nearmap.

The two main defences available if you are accused of infringing a patent are that the patent is invalid or that, even if the patent is valid, the accused product does not infringe the patent. So the whole issue of whether Nearmap's patent should have been registered in the first place can be considered in court. On the other hand, it would be very possible for Nearmap to want to argue that some of Eagleview's patents that they are alleging are infringed in this case are not valid as a preliminary point.