TYLER, Texas – The national law firm of McKool Smith is announcing a $200 million patent infringement verdict handed down in favor of Toronto-based i4i Inc. against software giant Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT).
The verdict was issued on May 20, 2009, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division. Jurors found that Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft willfully infringed an i4i patent covering a document formatting system.
A team of attorneys from McKool Smith and Tyler, Texas-based Parker, Bunt & Ainsworth successfully argued that Microsoft infringed an i4i patent issued in 1998, U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449, that covers software designed to manipulate “document architecture and content.” The software covered by the patent removed the need for individual, manually embedded command codes to control text formatting in electronic documents.
The jury found that Microsoft later deployed this technology in a range of the company’s operating system products, including Word 2003 and Word 2007.
The verdict followed an eight-day trial before the Hon. Judge Leonard Davis. The complete verdict amount, including awards for lost profits and royalties, totaled $200,000,000. The team of attorneys from McKool Smith representing i4i included firm principal Douglas A. Cawley, of counsel Alfredo Silva, and associate John Campbell.
McKool Smith has more than 100 attorneys in Dallas, Austin, Marshall, New York, and Washington DC, handling commercial, intellectual property and white collar litigation for national and international clients. The firm is recognized as one of the premier litigation law firms in the United States, having earned significant courtroom victories for clients such as American Airlines, Ericsson, Electronic Data Systems, Medtronic Inc., and Sony Ericsson. McKool Smith is recognized in The National Law Journal for winning more of the Top 100 Verdicts of 2008 than any firm in the nation.