Microsoft reiterates case against Word injunction

Microsoft on Monday reiterated its case in an appeal of an injunction ordering it to stop selling Word in its current form and argued against fines totaling $240 million for patent infringement and willful infringement.

The software giant is trying to get the federal appeals court to reverse a ruling in favor of Toronto-based I4i. That company sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the software giant violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) by including in the program XML code, which eliminates the need for manually embedded formatting codes.

In May, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the custom XML tagging features of Word 2003 and Word 2007 infringed on I4i's patent. Last month, a federal judge in Texas issued a permanent injunction barring Microsoft from selling Word with the code.

Microsoft appealed and in early September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., granted Microsoft's motion for a stay of the injunction.

Last week, I4i defended the case, the trial outcome and damages, saying they accurately reflected its patent ownership and Microsoft's infringement.

In its counter reply, Microsoft again argued that the lower court rulings used erroneous claim construction and definitions and applied the wrong legal standard to the case.

In addition, the damages verdict of $200 million is not a reasonable royalty amount and can not be sustained, and there is no basis for the $40 million award for willful infringement, the filing said.