“Microsoft Corp suffered a defeat on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld a record $290 million jury verdict against the software giant for infringing a small Canadian company’s patent,” James Vicini reports for Reuters. “The justices unanimously agreed with a U.S. appeals court ruling that went against the world’s largest software company in its legal battle with Toronto-based i4i.”
“The legal battle began in 2007 when i4i sued Microsoft. A federal jury awarded $290 million to i4i after finding that Microsoft, in 2003 and 2007 versions of Word, its word processing application, had infringed i4i’s patent relating to text manipulation software,” Vicini reports. “A U.S. appeals court upheld the award, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office upheld the validity of the i4i patent.”
“Microsoft continued to dispute those decisions, but removed the contested features from its current software,” Vicini reports. “In appealing to the Supreme Court, Microsoft said it wanted a new trial. But the justices ruled against Microsoft.”
Vicini reports, “The case is not entirely over, however, since Microsoft also has a challenge to the patent pending at the patent office and may have to pay other potential licensing fees, said Michel Vulpe, i4i’s founder and chief technology officer. ‘We’re very pleased that the court did the right thing,’ and that the decision was unanimous, Vulpe told Reuters.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Every bit they blow counts.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Greg” for the heads up.]
i4i got an eye for an eye. Big time. Now all Microsoft has to do is invest another $250 million on developing yet another stupid, useless product. Keep the money ball rolling right out the door.
An I for an I.
Funny thing is… Apple backed Microsoft on this one… LOL
An i 4 i! LOL
For the correct perspective on i4i vs. Microsoft, consider Lodsys vs. Apple devs.
This is a bad thing, even if it hurts Microsoft. Any victory by a patent troll is bad.
It’s getting harder to tell whether a company has intentionally violated someone else’s patent until it ends up settled in (or out of) court. And I would imagine that it’s getting harder for companies who write software and create high-end electronic hardware to know ahead of time if they are violating some obscure patent that may bite them later. It wouldn’t surprise me if a significant reason for Apple to hoard cash is in case of just such emergencies. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if their new development philosophy was “Just make/write/do it, and we’ll fight it out later by throwing money at it.” Sounds like classic Microsoft behavior, and I’d wager that at this level of success, it probably makes the most sense.
What I read was that Microsoft wanted the court to change the standard for patentability and the court simply said that such a move was the purvue of congress, not the court. Saying that, they let the ruling stand.
Apple is vulnerable on some things in the latest announcement.
i4i …. 2th-4-2th
As I said in the story about Lodsys…
Patents on software should be stopped immediately and existing ones revoked. Yes that will hurt Apple to some degree, but when EVERYONE is being harmed by them, and the only winners are the lawyers, then that system is obviously broken, is no longer serving the interests of invention and innovation, and that system must be torn down.
To any “free market” capitalists trying to defend them, remember patents (and copyrights, and trademarks) are GOVERNMENT-GRANTED and enforced systems, originally intended to add to and improve the public good (i.e. scary socialist ideas! Kill it now!)
The core of the problem is that patents are intended to *promote* innovation, by allowing the inventor to profit.
But since patents are being granted for very simple and obvious things, or things where there is clear prior art, the system is instead *stifling* innovation, taxing it with frivolous lawsuits like this.
If we can’t grant patents in a sensible manner, consistent with the intent of patent law to promote innovation rather than stifle it, then patents themselves need to go.
A great example of a patent which should never have been granted in the first place, which is now enabling an extortion scheme similar to (but not getting as much press as) Lodsys: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/05/worse-than-lodsys-macrosolves-sues.html