Redmond, Washington -- Software behemoth Microsoft Corp., lost its appeal of a lawsuit involving a Canadian company called i4i in May, after a jury ruled that the Redmond, Wash., software maker infringed one of i4i's patents with a custom XML feature found in Word, is preparing to modify its popular Word software to avoid an injunction on sales of the product.
In August an injunction was placed on sales of Word pending the appeal, which did not go in Microsoft's favor Tuesday. The lawsuit, a patent dispute over a feature few business users ever see, will cost Microsoft $290 million to settle patent-infringement verdict won by a Canadian firm.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit defended a jury verdict and lower court ruling in the patent case filed against the US software giant by Toronto-based i4i Inc nearly three years ago. The dispute is over an invention related to customizing extensible markup language, or XML, a way of encoding data to exchange information among programs. Microsoft has called it an “obscure functionality.”
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