Supreme Court Rules Against Microsoft In i4i Case

CWmike writes "The US Supreme Court has let stand a $300 million patent infringement ruling against Microsoft, granting a victory Thursday to i4i (PDF), which filed the lawsuit back in 2007. The legal battle already forced Microsoft to modify certain functionality in its Word application in 2009, when the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled in favor of Toronto-based i4i and told Microsoft to stop selling Word in the US. At issue was an i4i patent that covers technology that lets users manipulate the architecture and content of a document, which i4i alleged Microsoft infringed upon by letting Word users create custom XML documents. Microsoft removed the feature. 'This case raised an important issue of law which the Supreme Court itself had questioned in an earlier decision and which we believed needed resolution. While the outcome is not what we had hoped for, we will continue to advocate for changes to the law that will prevent abuse of the patent system and protect inventors who hold patents representing true innovation,' Microsoft said in a statement."

Comments

Re:Judge's don't understand technolog

[Trepidity]

This specific Supreme Court review didn't really touch on the technology issue, though, just the legal standard of proof, since the question they were reviewing was a pretty narrow one of statutory construction. Section 282 of the patent code specifies that, when a patent is challenged in court:

1. "A patent shall be presumed valid."

and

2. "The burden of establishing invalidity of a patent or any claim thereof shall rest on the party asserting such invalidity."

I disagree with that as a matter of policy, but that's what the Patent Act says, and absent any claim that it's unconstitutional, the only thing the Court was asked to decide here is what "burden" means, legally.

The Federal Circuit (a lower appeals court) has held for some years now that "burden of establishing invalidity" means that the party bringing a challenge must show "clear and convincing evidence" of the patent's invalidity. Microsoft argued that, for prior art that the patent office had not already considered in its review record, the burden of establishing invalidity should be lower, with a "preponderance of the evidence" standard.

I'd prefer the lower burden of proof, but this question isn't really at the heart of why we have a patent mess; at best it's a symptom.

Re:Too funny

[EdIII]

So now they have a good reason to change the system they've been abusing for the last decade.

Maybe it was second nature, or just the context of your point, but what you said is corporations changing the system they have been abusing.

What is tragic to me is that it is not the citizens being represented here. The whole system does not work at all for the consumer or society. We need major reform of the entire copyright/patent/trademark system starting with the fundamentals...... that public domain is the most valuable thing we own and that it needs to be protected first.

The way corporations want it, and that includes MS (and especially Disney), is that the public domain does not exist at all. They keep pushing for permanent ownership of ideas and expressions without the possibility of being put *back* into the public domain.