US Supreme Court turns down Microsoft plea on patent infringement

The US Supreme Court has turned down Microsoft's appeal against a $290 million verdict concerning infringement of a small Canadian company's patent.

The company, i4i, took Microsoft to court in 2007, claiming it owned the technology behind the text manipulation tool used in the software giant's text manipulation tool in Microsoft's Word application (See: Court rejects Microsoft's appeal against i4i).

With the technology, Word 2003 and Word 2007 users could use a document's contents in an improved way.

Lower courts had found that Microsoft wilfully breached the patent. Microsoft was asked to pay up and stop selling versions of Word that contained the infringing technology.

According to Microsoft, a judge used the wrong standard in instructing the jury that decided on the award, and asked for overturning the judgment.

Microsoft argued for a lower standard of proof of infringement to be used instead. The company contended that the level of proof usually required to overturn a patent in the US was too high.