Microsoft has vowed to appeal after being ordered by a Texan court to pay a Canadian software firm called i4i a whopping US$200m in damages for infringing a patent.
i4i claimed in a suit filed in 2007 that Microsoft knowingly infringed one of its patents in its Word word-processing software and in its Vista operating system.
Only last month, Microsoft was ordered to pay US$388m in damages for infringing a patent held by anti-piracy maker Uniloc.
The Toronto-based i4i is understood to be involved in a number of other patent lawsuits with technology firms.
The patent in question concerned the software for manipulating a document’s content and architecture separately.
Throughout the case Microsoft has denied the infringement occurred.
Just like with the Uniloc case, Microsoft is likely to appeal the verdict, which it has described as legally and factually unsupported.
By John Kennedy
