Legal News

Microsoft Gets Slammed in Yet Another Patent Suit

By Ashby Jones

In what’s being billed as the fifth-largest patent award in history — and the second largest this year — a federal jury in Rhode Island on Wednesday ordered Microsoft to pay $388 million to Uniloc USA Inc. and Uniloc Singapore Private Ltd. for infringing a software patent.

Uniloc, based in Irvine, Calif., makes antipiracy tools for the software and videogames industries. The company alleged that Microsoft had infringed its patent through the “product activation” system which is installed in its Windows operating system and Office tools. According to this Dow Jones Newswires story, “product activation” requires a customer to register as the authorized user before using the software, to prevent a single copy being installed on several machines.

Uniloc which patented the technology in 1992, brought the case in 2003. Last August, a federal appeals court ordered the lawsuit to go to trial in Providence, R.I., after it reversed a summary judgment in favor of Microsoft.

On Wednesday, the jury found Microsoft willfully infringed the patent.

“It’s a significant victory for Uniloc, which is, frankly, a small company struggling against a giant,” said Mintz Levin’s Paul Hayes, who represented Uniloc.

"We are very disappointed in the jury verdict," David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesman, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg. "We believe that we do not infringe, that the patent is invalid and that this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported. We will ask the court to overturn the verdict."

Four of the six largest patent verdicts have gone against Microsoft, according to Bloomberg. Lawyers for Fish & Richardson represented Microsoft.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 09, 2009 (boomark / email).