Supreme Court Rules Against Microsoft In i4i Case 162
CWmike writes "The US Supreme Court has let stand a $300 million patent infringement ruling against Microsoft, granting a victory Thursday to i4i (PDF), which filed the lawsuit back in 2007. The legal battle already forced Microsoft to modify certain functionality in its Word application in 2009, when the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled in favor of Toronto-based i4i and told Microsoft to stop selling Word in the US. At issue was an i4i patent that covers technology that lets users manipulate the architecture and content of a document, which i4i alleged Microsoft infringed upon by letting Word users create custom XML documents. Microsoft removed the feature. 'This case raised an important issue of law which the Supreme Court itself had questioned in an earlier decision and which we believed needed resolution. While the outcome is not what we had hoped for, we will continue to advocate for changes to the law that will prevent abuse of the patent system and protect inventors who hold patents representing true innovation,' Microsoft said in a statement."
Re:And the band marches on... (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree, I'm not sure this case specifically was the venue to change that. It appears that the case revolved around whether a patent can be found invalid by "preponderance of the evidence" or by "clear and convincing evidence". The Court held "Section 282 requires an invalidity defense to be proved by clear and convincing evidence".
That the burden of proving a patent invalid falls on the party claiming it is invalid sounds good to me; otherwise small-time patent owners would never be able to go to court and prove (over and over) that all their patents are valid against a deep-pocketed adversary.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-290.pdf
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Informative)
Here are a couple articles describing some times when Microsoft has sued different companies over patents:
TomTom:
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/02/Microsoft_sues_TomTom_over_patents_in_case_with_Linux_subplot_40305732.html [techflash.com]
Salesforce:
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/49826-microsoft-sued-over-patents-for-a-change [tgdaily.com]
Motorola:
http://www.osnews.com/story/23860/Microsoft_Slaps_Motorola_with_Patent_Lawsuit_over_Android [osnews.com]
Barnes & Noble:
http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/microsoft-sues-barnes-noble/ [mashable.com]
Just a few of the companies being sued by Microsoft.
Most companies don't wanna get sued by Microsoft - so they often settle.
But Microsoft will sue if they don't get their way.
Re:Too funny (Score:2, Informative)
Well, another way of looking at it is that it implements the feature they patented... For all intents and purposes, the software existed before the lawsuit. It's just that people are now going to have to buy it rather than rely of Microsoft ripping it off.