MICROSOFT GUILTY OF PATENT INFRINGEMENT IN SECOND TRIAL IN 2 MONTHS:$600 Million in Judgments

A federal jury in Texas found that Microsoft willfully infinged the patents of Canada-based software company i4i, based on template applications of Microsoft Word released in 2003 and 2007. The court ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million to i4i in damages. Microsoft plans to appeal. This is the second multi-million dollar patent infringement verdict assessed against Microsoft in as many months.

In April, Microsoft lost a patent infringement verdict of nearly $400 million to Uniloc, a California based company with patented anti-piracy technology. The Uniloc software crawls through a PC registered to run proprietary software, creating a "fingerprint" of the authorized computer. The device recognition software prevents licensed software from being run on unauthorized devices. Microsoft had unsuccessfully approached Uniloc in the 1990s about purchasing the company, or obtaining an exclusive license for the antipiracy software. Unilic sued when it learned Microsoft was running a similar device recognition program.