On Wednesday, a federal court in Texas slapped Microsoft with a $200 million letters patent breach ruling looking for including a Canadian software firm’s technology in Microsoft Word.
Toronto-based i4i, a developer of XML-based collaborative satisfied solutions, sued Microsoft in 2007 looking for customizing the XML in Word 2003 and Word 2007 in a mode that violated i4i’s letters patent, charges that Microsoft has denied. According to Bloomberg News, i4i’s in the event centered on Microsoft’s method looking for processing Word files using embedded codes that fix up with stocks instructions on how proffering appears.
As it has done in close by rulings that haven’t gone its mode, Microsoft insists it didn’t exceed butt in on i4i’s letters patent and that the letters patent is sickly. Microsoft force inquire the court to fall the verdict, Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster told Bloomberg News. Uniloc claims Microsoft’s Windows Product Activation (WPA) antipiracy agency infringes its letters patent, and Microsoft is appealing that ruling as clearly.
Last month, a federal court in Rhode Island ordered Microsoft to camp $388 million in damages looking for infringing on an antipiracy letters patent owned around Uniloc, a Singapore-based developer of antipiracy software.
In 2004, Z4 Technologies, a Michigan-based letters patent holding break down into, sued Microsoft looking for using its technology in WPA, and in April 2006 won a $115 million judgment against Microsoft in U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas.
Microsoft, of inescapable, is farthest more widespread to filing letters patent breach lawsuits than it is to defending itself.
However, that in the event has opened a can of worms looking for Microsoft, as The Open Invention Network, an commerce systematizing that protects Linux around acquiring and licensing open-source patents, has urged the open-source community to criticism the three Microsoft patents with a effect of construction them impracticable looking for tramontane ensemble. Microsoft claims that enfranchise and/or open-source software violates 235 of its patents, and in February, the comrades sued in-car GPS catchword maker TomTom looking for infringing three of them in TomTom’s implementation of the Linux quiddity.