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Microsoft to fight $200 million patent infringement ruling

Microsoft has been ordered to pay i4i $200 million for infringing on one of …

A federal jury in the hotbed of patent litigation, Tyler, Texas, has ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million to Canadian company i4i for infringing on its patent. The Toronto-based company holds a patent for processing electronic documents using embedded codes that provide instructions on how information appears. The amount is the exact sum that i4i requested, but the judge can still increase the fine if it is found that Microsoft willfully infringed on the patent, which is what i4i originally claimed. Furthermore, i4i can also demand a court order that blocks Microsoft from further using the technology.

Word 2003 and Word 2007 use extensible markup language (XML) for encoding and customizing the XML in a way that i4i believes infringes on its patent. While both sides agreed that many people use Word without ever using custom XML, Microsoft made a point to deny infringement throughout the case. The patent in question is US Patent No. 5,787,449; here is its abstract:


David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesperson, said Microsoft will appeal the result of the trial, and gave the following statement on the verdict: "We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We believe this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict."

This is the second-largest patent jury award this year, behind a $388-million verdict against Microsoft won by a Singapore company just last month. In that case also, Redmond said it would try to overturn the result of the trial.

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