i4i Patent Upheld

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of the United States held that under the Patent Act, i4i’s patent for storing a document’s content separately from the document’s structure is presumed valid and Microsoft must provide clear and convincing evidence that the patent was invalid. The decision upholds a US$290 million patent infringement judgment against Microsoft. However, it also maintains the standard of evidence required to challenge the validity of any U.S. patent and signals that Congress, not the courts, will have to make any changes to those standards.

The i4i Case

The dispute arose out of a 2007 patent infringement case in which the Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in the Eastern District of Texas. A patent grants the right to exclude others from using a patented idea, and the unlicensed use of a patent is called infringement. i4i alleged that a feature of Word 2007 that allowed users to combine text with custom XML schema infringed i4i’s 5,789,449 patent, which describes a method for processing and storing content in a document separately from the information that describes the document’s structure. A jury found in i4i’s favor in May 2009, ordering Microsoft to pay US$200 million in damages. Subsequent rulings and interest now place the award at US$290 million.