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Is Microsoft one bad day away from a Supreme Court petition in the i4i battle?
While the rain was literally and figuratively coming down on the AmeriKat's head, the storm clouds that have been nestled over Microsoft's i4i saga over the past three years may have finally burst. Last Tuesday, i4i announced that the USPTO confirmed the validity of all the claims in one of the patents subject to the dispute in the i4i v Microsoft litigation which saw i4i receive a $290 million jury award (see previous IPKat posts here). The large jury award was later upheld by the Circuit Court of Appeals and Microsoft's subsequent appeals to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit were not granted. Prior to the original jury verdict, Microsoft had requested that the USPTO re-examine i4i's patent related to the customization and processing of extensible markup language, or XML (No. 5,787,449) in the hope that the patent would be declared invalid.
"We are disappointed, but there still remain important matters of patent law at stake, and we are considering our options to get them addressed, including a petition to the Supreme Court."
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i4i's Chairmain, Loudon Owen stated in a press release that the
" '449 patented invention infuses life into the use of Extensible Mark Up Language (XML) and dramatically enhances the ability to structure what was previously unstructured data. As the magnitude of data grows exponentially, this is a critical technological bridge to controlling and managing this sprawling octopus of data and converting it into useful information."
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Thanks for the kind mention, and thanks for the HTC report, it is indeed quite interesting. I have an HTC Hero myself, so I'm hoping for an HTC victory.
ReplyDeleteIt's looking like Bilski will be out until June, who would have guessed?
From Patently-O:
ReplyDelete"Bilski, Bilski
Wherefore art thou Bilski?
Whether 'tis nobler in the end
To suffer the slings and arrows of 101
Or to take up 103 and 112
And by applying them properly
End the nonsense
with apologies to the Bard
Posted by: Hagbard Celine | Apr 29, 2010 at 03:53 AM "