Federal Circuit Decision Upholds Grant of a Permanent Injunction Against Microsoft Corporation in i4i Limited Partnership v. Microsoft Corporation
January 4, 2010
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently handed down a decision in i4i Limited Partnership v. Microsoft Corporation, No. 2009-1504, slip. op. (Fed. Cir., Dec. 22, 2009). The decision was noteworthy in that it upheld the grant of a permanent injunction against Microsoft Corporation regarding Microsoft’s Word product. The upholding of a permanent injunction against such a flagship product is somewhat unusual. The Federal Circuit also affirmed the grant of $200 million in damages and $40 million in enhanced damages against Microsoft for infringing i4i’s patent.
The Federal Circuit noted that the permanent injunction is “narrow” in that it does not apply to copies of Word that were sold or licensed before the effective date of the injunction (January 11, 2009). The injunction, among other things, prohibits Microsoft from selling, offering to sell and/or importing into the United States any infringing Word products with the capability of opening XML files containing custom XML. Microsoft has publicly stated that it will modify Word so that Word no longer infringes the i4i patent.
The patent in suit is U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449. The patent relates to an improved method for editing documents containing mark-up language like XML. The improvement stems from storing a document’s content and metacodes separately. This is achieved primarily by using a “metacode map,” which is a data structure that stores metacodes and their locations within a document. This metacode map allows users to work solely on either a document, content or on a document’s structure.
Microsoft added the ability to edit XML in 2003. i4i alleged that Microsoft infringed their patent because of Word’s ability to process and/or edit custom XML.
For More Information
Please contact Kevin J. Canning at kcanning@lahive.com or 617.994.0732 with questions regarding this decision. Lahive’s IP Software group assists technology companies with a full range of intellectual property services, including software patent strategy, portfolio development, prosecution, and infringement issues.
