The company's appeal of the $290M award, injunction to stop selling Word is scathing
Microsoft has filed an appeal against a verdict that awarded a Canadian developer nearly $300 million in damages and an impending ban on sales of Word. The company is arguing that the judge overseeing the court case was negligent, not recognizing that this was “a trial run amok.”
The 84-page appeal skewered the U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis, asserting that Davis failed to properly instruct the jury and committed a “miscarriage of justice” by awarding more damages than i4i had sought, and adding the injunction against selling Wordreports a story from Computerworld.
Prior to 2006, when a party was found guilty of patent infringement, an injunction against selling the offending product was a given. But, in the eBay versus MercExchange patent case, the Supreme Court ruled that MercExchange, who won the suite, was not automatically entitled to a court order blocking use of the technology. Since then, technology patent cases, and in particular software patent cases, have rarely included such injunctions.
Microsoft lawyers railed:
“This is not justice,” Microsoft said. “If district courts are free to admit theories of infringement that nullify a patent s claim terms, specification, prosecution history, and title; if they will allow an inventor to validate his patent by testifying without corroboration that he lied about the date of conception & then patent litigation will be reduced to a free-for-all.”
Microsoft lawyers probably have a point.
An oral hearing for the appeal is slated for Sept. 23, after i4i files its response and Microsoft is given a chance to rebut. If Microsoft’s lawyers can’t reverse the course of this, they will be forced to stop selling Word on Oct. 10. For those of you looking to buy new Windows 7 computers, complete with an office suite when that ships October 22, I would say you can expect a friendly phone call from your local Google Apps resellers.
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