Microsoft, a small company in Washington, has been hit by a $200 million lawsuit by a company in Toronto called i4i over some sort of XML tagging to Microsoft Word. That’s $200 million US, not CAD.
Microsoft would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.
The jury in the case before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found Microsoft “wilfully infringed” on i4i’s patent.
Cawley said that means the judge could triple the damages.
Cawley said the key to the case were Microsoft emails showing the company knew about i4i’s patent.
Bloops! Note to self: never email other people about stealing people’s stuff. Use the phone!
I’d bet the emails didn’t say “let’s infringe the patent”, I’d think more along the lines of “we’re aware of them but don’t think we’re doing anything wrong, here’s why.”
Would be interesting to see the emails, or at least get an impartial summary of the content.