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Diamond Member Username: NydasPost Number: 20996 Registered: Jun-06 | Jameson Berkow Apr 18, 2011 -- 9:00 AM ET The U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments Monday for and against changing U.S. patent law to make patents easier to invalidate. On one side of the historic battle is a small Canadian software firm hoping the law will remain the same, while on the other is the largest software company on Earth hoping to have the law changed. The case between Toronto-based i4i Inc. and Redmond, Wash.based Microsoft Corp. will mark the final battle in a four-year-long patent dispute. Each side will be given 30 minutes to present its opening statement to the eight sitting justices, since Chief Justice John Roberts has recused himself. Malcolm L. Stewart, United States Deputy Solicitor General, will speak on behalf of the U.S. government for 10 of i4i's minutes. Originally filed in March 2007, the lawsuit claims Microsoft's Word 2003 software uses i4i's technology to open documents using the XML programming language, for which i4i has held a patent since 1998. A U.S. federal district court judge in Texas ruled in favour of i4i in August 2009, awarding the Toronto company US$290-million in damages and barring Microsoft from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 until it had removed i4i's code from its software. Microsoft removed the contested sections of code in January 2010, though the Windows maker is famous for never fully backing down from a legal fight. So when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected its second request to have the validity of i4i's patent re-examined, Microsoft appealed to the country's highest legal authority. With the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case last November, i4i chairman Loudon Owen now believes Microsoft will argue that the current standard for invalidating a patent is too high, asking the court to lower the standard from "clear and convincing evidence" to what is called a "mere preponderance," he said. His concern is that if patents can be more easily invalidated, people will be less inclined to incur the time and expense necessary to acquire them. It was a five-year process for i4i's patent to gain approval. Last round - David v. Goliath |
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Bronze Member Username: FournoPost Number: 18 Registered: Mar-11 | Thank you Mr. Reporter, Sir |