Microsoft Loses Appeal in Patent Case

[alp227]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Supreme Court ruled against Microsoft on Thursday in its appeal of a record $290 million jury verdict for infringing a small Canadian software firm’s patent.

The justices unanimously upheld an appeals court’s ruling that went against the world’s largest software company in its legal battle with Toronto-based i4i Limited Partnership. The smaller company had argued that Microsoft Word had infringed its method for editing documents. Microsoft contended that i4i’s patent was invalid.

The high court rejected Microsoft’s argument that it should adopt a lower legal standard to replace the long-standing requirement that a defendant in a patent infringement case prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that a plaintiff’s patent is invalid.

“We consider whether” a section of the Patent Act of 1952 “requires an invalidity defense to be proved by clear and convincing evidence. We hold that it does,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the court’s 20-page opinion.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/business/10bizcourt.html

[HopeHoops]

1. Wow - $290 million - they might have to cut back on helicopter rides for the executives for a week.

[wilt the stilt]

2. Impossible

Microsoft has never stolen someone's idea or used predatory pricing practices.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Microsoft Loses Supreme Court Case

Source: NPR ; National Public Radio

By Nina Totenberg
June 9, 2011

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a $290 million judgment against Microsoft for patent infringement. The award is the largest ever upheld on appeal in a patent case.

A small software company called i4i sued Microsoft in 2007, alleging that the industry giant had, without permission, used an editing tool patented by i4i — specifically, that the program was used in Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007. A jury ruled against Microsoft, ordering it to pay $290 million to i4i and to stop using the patented editing tool.

Microsoft appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. The company told the justices that i4i's patent was invalid and that the standard for proving invalidity should be less rigorous than the standard applied by the lower courts.

But on Thursday, Microsoft lost in the Supreme Court by an 8-0 vote. Writing for the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said federal law clearly states patents granted by the U.S. Patent Office are presumed valid.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/09/137084487/microsoft-loses-supreme-court-case?ps=cprs

[leveymg]

4. Nukem got knocked on his keister. Score one for the little guy.

:evilgrin: :bounce: :popcorn:

[aquart]

5. Wait. SCOTUS ruled for a little guy over a big corp?

Is there another even bigger corp that will benefit? (Oh, why am I so suspicious?)

[hunter]

8. Maybe Microsoft wins by losing...

... think how many patents they own. Maybe Microsoft can point to this and sue Google for $600 million dollars.

[jberryhill]

14. They were calling for a fundamental change in standards

The standard for invalidity has been "clear and convincing" for a long time. It is a notch below "beyond a reasonable doubt" in criminal proceedings and is the highest civil standard.

Arguing for a fundamental change like that is really bucking against a lot of weight. When that kind of a case gets this far, there are likely good arguments on either side, but the Supreme Court is particularly cautious about patent cases, since all intermediate patent appeals go through a single court assigned specifically to patent cases in order to avoid conflicts among circuits.

It's really not often they take a patent case up, and it is a tribute to Microsoft's influence that they even took this one.

Absent a legislative change, though, what they were seeking to change was really bedrock patent law.

[Rex]

6. Microsoft doesn't care...they will keep appealing until the otherside

runs out of money.

[jberryhill]

11. It's the US Supreme Court

Uhmm.... just where do they appeal to after that?

[boppers]

12. They go backwards, and appeal on a "new", different, issue?

300 million is a lot of lawyer time.

[jberryhill]

13. Coming up from a jury verdict, they waived what they didn't raise

If they were coming up from preliminary motions before trial, they might pop back up again. But at each step from a jury verdict, they were time limited at what they could raise at each successive level.

This one might be spent.

[Rex]

15. World court? Give Microsoft time.

They will find a way to make the complainant default.

[AngryAmish]

7. 290 million / 3 = 96.67 million, plus expenses.

Plus interest from date of judgment (t-bill yearly average).

I'd even buy a boat. And I fucking hate boats. Then every afternoon I'd sit around drinking beer and counting my money.

[cliffordu]

9. Sounds like a fabbo set of lifestyle choices to me....

I hate boats, too, but shit. With that kind of cash I could build a boat big enough to make me think I was on dry land.

[alfredo]

10. That could be the least of their troubles.

Apple has been waging a very patient insurgency against Microsoft for decades.

http://www.cringely.com/2011/06/iclouds-real-purpose-is-to-kill-windows/

Apple’s announcements yesterday about OS X 10.7 pricing (cheap), upgrading (easy), iOS 5, and iCloud storage, syncing, and media service can all be viewed as increasing ease of use, but from the perspective of Apple CEO Steve Jobs they perform an even more vital function — killing Microsoft.

Here is the money line from Jobs yesterday: “We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device – just like an iPad, an iPhone or an iPod Touch. We’re going to move the hub of your digital life to the cloud.”

Just like they used to say at Sun Microsystems, the network is the computer. Or we could go even further and say our data is the computer.

[JCMach1]

17. Yeah, Apple's data!

[alfredo]

18. Google's, MS's, and any other Cloud solution will probably

have similar EULA's/

[Vidar]

16. Anytime Microsoft loses, it's a good thing.