| Microsoft has lost its appeal against i4i in Word patent case again |
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12/03/2010 16:44 (701 Day 22:11 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- Microsoft has lost an appeal against a court judgement that told it to pay $240m (£160m) in damages, according to BBC.
The verdict, which the appeals court first affirmed in December, required Microsoft to pay more than US$240 million in damages and forced it to remove a feature in versions of Microsoft Word 2007 starting in January, as PC World reports. Microsoft had been charged with infringing a patent owned by i4i with a feature in Word 2003 and 2007 that lets people create custom XML documents.
Microsoft asked the appeals court to reconsider its decision, and on Wednesday the appeals court upheld its previous affirmation of the district court ruling, the same source reports. Much of the latest decision is identical to the December document, except for an expanded explanation of the three-judge panel's decision to uphold the "willfulness" issue.
"The appeals court has again upheld the lower court's decision in its entirety. In addition, it issued a more detailed analysis in concerning the finding of willfulness in this case. The determination that Microsoft willfully infringed i4i's patent stands," Loudon Owen, chairman of i4i, said in a statement, as PC Mag informs.
The judgement also required Microsoft to remove the i4i technology from its Office software suite and stop selling the infringing programs, according to BBC. The injunction on sales began in January 2010 and applied to any Microsoft Office software, specifically Word 2003 and 2007, containing the infringing patents.
Since it lost the first round of the legal battle, Microsoft has been stripping the disputed technology from its Office products, the same source reports. Soon after losing the initial case, Microsoft filed an appeal asking the court to re-think its decision. In December 2009, a panel of judges upheld the initial ruling.
According to The Enquirer, the judges explained that "a reasonable jury could have concluded that Microsoft 'willfully' infringed the '449' patent based on the evidence presented at trial."
The court noted that Microsoft employees attended demonstrations of the i4i software and received i4i sales kits that identified the software as patented technology, the same source reports. This piece of evidence and others imply that Microsoft was aware of the i4i patent, the decision says.
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