A Michigan man on Wednesday was awarded $133 million by a Texas jury in a patent dispute against Microsoft Corp. and Autodesk Inc., a spokeswoman for Microsoft said.
Microsoft was ordered to pay $115 million, and Autodesk was required to pay $18 million to David Colvin, the founder of z4 Technologies Inc., who sued the two software companies in federal court, claiming they appropriated two of his anti-piracy software patents with Microsoft"s Office and Windows XP and Autodesk"s AutoCad programs, the spokeswoman said.
"While we are disappointed with this verdict, we continue to contend that there was no infringement of any kind and that the facts in this case show that Microsoft developed its own product activation technologies well before z4 Technologies filed for its patent," Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said in an e-mail response.