Court rejects Microsoft's appeal against i4i

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday declined software giant Microsoft Corp's request for a review of the court's decision to uphold an earlier judgment against the company in its patent case against Toronto-based i4i Inc.

i4i chairman Owen Louden said the company is delighted by this ruling.

"This has been a long and arduous process, but this decision is a powerful reinforcement of the message that smaller enterprises and inventors who own intellectual property can and will be protected," he said.

i4i, which sells custom-XML add-ons to the ubiquitous word-processing software, had sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the software giant willfully infringed on its 1998 patent by building a method of processing custom XML into Word 2003 and Word 2007 programmes.

In 2009, a federal court in Texas ruled in favor of i4i, slapping a record fine of $290 million on Microsoft, and enjoined the sale of versions of Word that included the offending technology (See: Microsoft loses patent appeal, ordered to alter Word).

As the software giant has now lost the case, the only recourse Microsoft is left with is to apply to the US Supreme Court, say analysts.