Judge overturns Uniloc verdict and $388m fine
InternetNews | at | by Mike
A federal district judge in Rhode Island Tuesday overturned a jury verdict and its huge damages award, thus nullifying a patent infringement case that went against Microsoft last spring.
The case had pitted the software titan's legal eagles against tiny Uniloc USA, a California software firm owned by an Australian company, which claimed that Microsoft had infringed its patent for activating software.
Uniloc sued Microsoft in October 2003 in regard to 13 of its patented software activation technologies. It claimed that Microsoft had used Uniloc's technologies in four Microsoft products -- Office XP, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and a discontinued product called Digital Media Plus.