Microsoft Gets Apple, Google Support in I4i High Court Appeal
Microsoft Corp. is getting some support from Google Inc. and Apple Inc. in its efforts to overturn a patent-infringement verdict that forced the software maker to change its Word program.
Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider making it easier to invalidate patents in a case it lost to closely held I4i Inc. of Toronto. Google, Apple, Intel Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association trade group are among those that filed papers today urging the high court to take the case.
Under federal law, a patent is presumed valid because it has undergone scrutiny by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and courts require “clear and convincing” evidence to overcome that. Microsoft contends that the presumption doesn’t apply when a jury is hearing evidence that wasn’t considered during the application process.
“Juries take the presumption of validity very seriously and are extremely reluctant to second-guess the PTO’s determination,” a group including Google, retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and phone company Verizon Communications Inc. said in a filing today. “The clear-and-convincing-evidence standard serves only to tilt the playing field even further in favor of patent holders.”
Encoding Data
The case before the Supreme Court involves a dispute over I4i’s invention related to customizing extensible markup language, or XML, a way of encoding data to exchange information among programs. Microsoft issued an update to its Word software to comply with a court order that it stop using the invention.
The jury also awarded $200 million in damages, which was later adjusted to $290 million to cover continued infringement and enhanced damages. A victory for Microsoft at the high court may mean a new trial on the specific validity question.
I4i Chairman Loudon Owen said in an interview that the company is “confident we’ll continue to prevail.” I4i, whose software is used by drugmakers such as Merck & Co. to make sure people get correct and up-to-date information on medicine labels, has until Oct. 29 to file its response.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, failed to persuade the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent law, to consider the issue in both the I4i appeal and in a case involving Alcatel-Lucent SA. In the latter case, the Federal Circuit refused to overturn a jury verdict against Microsoft even as it ordered a new trial on damages.
Dozens of Lawsuits
At any given time, Microsoft is facing about four dozen patent-infringement lawsuits, often by smaller companies or individual inventors, according to the company’s annual reports. This year, more than a dozen have been filed against Mountain View, California-based Google and more than two dozen against Cupertino, California-based Apple, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The case is hugely important to the tech community,” said John Thorne, deputy general counsel at New York-based Verizon. “More patents would be ruled invalid and that will have an effect that will be felt by people with weak patents. If you have a strong patent, it doesn’t matter.”
The case is Microsoft Corp. v. I4I Limited Partnership, 10- 290, U.S. Supreme Court (Washington). The appeals court case is I4i LP v. Microsoft Corp., 2009-1504, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). The lower-court case is I4i LP v. Microsoft Corp., 07-cv-113, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Tyler).
To contact the reporter on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
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