Patent Law

The following is excerpted from a May 20, 2009 article by Simon Avery appearing at the Globe and Mail:

A small technology company in Toronto has won a Texas jury verdict ordering Microsoft Corp. to pay it $200-million (U.S.) for willful patent infringement.

Privately-held i4i Inc. said that several years ago it approached the world's largest software company with a breakthrough product in data processing, only to be spurned and to see its technology show up later in versions of Microsoft Word.

?It's a big win in terms of vindication. The money's nice, but the vindication is more important,? said Bill Cox, a member of i4i's board of directors and former president of the company.

I4i sued Microsoft in March 2007, claiming the Redmond, Wash., company had infringed on a patent awarded in 1998 for manipulating complex data in electronic documents.

Douglas Cawley, a lawyer for i4i, said Wednesday that e-mails presented during the six-day trial showed that Microsoft was aware of the firm's technology and sought to make it obsolete by including it in its own word processing software.

I4i will now seek an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling those products, Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007. It will also ask the judge for enhanced damages, Mr. Cawley said.

Because the jury found Microsoft had willfully infringed the technology, the judge is allowed to increase a jury award by up to three times the value.

Read the full article here.