A federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million in damages to Toronto, Canada based software company i4i Ltd, for patent infringement. According to CXO Today the patent centered around Microsoft's customization of XML technology used in Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007.
The suit was originally filed in 2007, and the verdict followed an eight-day trial, with Judge Leonard Davis presiding.
According to McKool Smith, the lawyers for i4i, the patent was issued in 1998 as U.S. Patent No. 5,787,499 and covers "software designed to manipulate document architecture and content. The software covered by the patent removed the need for individual, manually embedded command codes to control text formatting in electronic documents."
Microsoft denies any infringement took place and plans to appeal the verdict.
"The evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid," a Microsoft spokesman told Reuters. "We believe this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict."
In April of this year, Uniloc Inc. was awarded $388 million in damages from Microsoft for patent infringement related to anti-piracy technologies. Microsoft is appealing that verdict as well.
View: XML document modification information on i4i Website View: US Patent Office information for No. 5,787,499
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