The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against Microsoft in an appeal tied to a major patent dispute, ordering the Redmond-based company to pay a record $290 million patent fine. Supreme Court justices voted unanimously to uphold an earlier judgement stating Microsoft had infringed patents belonging to small Canadian software firm i4i. The judgement comes following a legal battle that began in 2007 when i4i sued the software giant claiming its Microsoft Word productivity software infringed on i4i patents. I...

A four-year old patent dispute is about to be put to rest. In a complaint originally filed in 2007, Toronto-based firm i4i alleged that Microsoft used proprietary code to display XML files in its Microsoft Word 2003 product. A Texas jury ruled in favor of i4i in August of 2009, and awarded the company a $290 million settlement — Microsoft was also barred from selling Word 2003 until i4i’s code was removed. The U.S. software giant has excavated the bits in question, but Microsoft is looking to the...

January 11th was zero hour for Microsoft as the injunction against Word and Office 2007 went into effect. The software giant out of Redmond had indicated that it was prepared for the injunction and would have it products fixed and ready to roll on the injunction date. Despite its good intentions, Microsoft failed to deliver this update and has pulled most of its Office 2007 and Word 2007 products from the shelves of its online store. Microsoft informs customers that these affected Office and Word 2007 version...

In an interesting turn of events, Seattle PI is reporting that a Texas judge has ordered Microsoft to cease all sales of its famed word processor in the US within 60 days. No, seriously. The injunction came as the result of a patent dispute between Canadian software company i4i and Microsoft regarding the processes with which Word handles XML files. This isn’t the first victory for i4i over the Washingtonian beast either — back in May a court awarded the company $200 million in damages as it found...