A nice, easy exit for Mint, which might have been the next Intuit–had it stayed the course and remained independent. But above all, a savvy move for Intuit (INTU), which has neutralized a growing threat to its Quicken Online and absorbed Mint’s 1.4 million registered users and their $47 billion in assets. Seems that “doesn’t-make-me-scoff-out-loud business plan” that Kara Swisher once noted, worked out quite well for Mint.

Below, Swisher’s January 2008 interview with Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer.

UPDATE: Patzer has confirmed the acquisition from the TechCrunch 50 stage. The price is indeed $170 million.

The $200 million verdict is the second-largest patent jury award this year, the largest of all–coincidentally, I’m sure–being the $388 million verdict against Microsoft won by Singapore’s Uniloc in April over an infringement of its security technology. Then, as in the i4i case and most other patent rulings that haven’t gone its way, Redmond responded with incredulity, claiming it couldn’t have possibly infringed on the patent because the patent is invalid. “We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid,” said David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesman, in the company’s now boilerplate statement on such matters. “We believe this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict.”