The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office‘s recent confirmation of the validity of a patent that netted i4i Limited Partnership a $290 million infringement judgment against Microsoft Corp. means the U.S. Supreme Court is likely Microsoft’s last hope to overturn the judgment.

On Tuesday, i4i announced that the PTO affirmed the patentability of all the claims in its patent for processing and storing information about electronic documents’ structure. In its lawsuit, i4i claimed that Microsoft Word 2007 infringed that patent, and Microsoft had requested a re-examination in the hopes that the PTO would declare the patent invalid. The PTO has yet to issue a formal certificate confirming the patent’s validity, but the agency informed Canadian software company i4i of its notice of intent to issue an ex parte re-examination certificate on April 28.

In an e-mailed statement, Kevin Kutz, Microsoft’s director of public affairs, said that while the company is disappointed, “there still remain important matters of patent law at stake, and we are considering our options to get them addressed, including a petition to the Supreme Court.”

Microsoft’s bid to use its request for a patent office re-examination of i4i’s patent “has failed in a dramatic way,” said i4i’s lawyer for the re-examination, Rob Greene Sterne, founder of Washington-based Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox.

Microsoft filed its PTO re-examination request before the jury verdict but well into the lawsuit, probably as a backup plan in case it lost the lawsuit, Sterne said. “Microsoft, I’m sure, assumed that they would win the re-exam or create significant difficulties for i4i in the re-exam that would drive a better settlement,” he said.

Lawyers say that unless Microsoft finds grounds for a motion for relief from judgment, such as newly discovered evidence or fraud, the U.S. Supreme Court is its last avenue.

Microsoft is “pretty much at the end of their line” unless the Supreme Court takes its case as one of the handful of patent matters the Court hears each year, said Thomas Engellenner, the co-chair of the patent practice group at Boston’s Nutter, McClennen & Fish. Engellenner wasn’t involved in the case.

via Law.com – Microsoft Dealt Major Setback Over $290 Million Infringement Judgment.

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via Lessons on E-Discovery in Canada || ESIBytes.

The company, based in Redmond, Washington, was given until Jan. 11 — five months from the original order issued in August — to make the change by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. Word is part of Microsoft’s Office software, used by more than 500 million people.

The court today upheld a verdict which has since grown to $290 million won by closely held I4i LP of Toronto. The dispute is over a patented invention related to customizing extensible markup language, or XML, a way of encoding data to exchange information among programs. Microsoft has called it an “obscure functionality.”

via Court Tells Microsoft to Edit Word – BusinessWeek.

The case, filed against IMAX Corp. and several individual defendants in Toronto in the fall of 2006, is considered a litmus test for a new securities law creating U.S.-style civil liability for misrepresentations that affect stock market values.

Monday’s two-part decision permits the litigation to proceed and separately certifies a global class of investors — no small matter considering that some 80-85 percent of investors reside outside of Canada. The decision also explicitly calls the threshold for such pleadings a low one, which “will no doubt be cheered by investors, and jeered by Bay and Wall Streets,” wrote Jim Middlemiss at The Legal Post.

via Ontario Judge Certifies Global Investor Class in Landmark Decision.

Hong Kong is steadily gaining global recognition as an international arbitration centre for the Asia Pacific region, providing an ideal venue for speedy and reliable dispute solutions.

That’s a key message that Mr. Yan Lung Wong, Secretary of Justice of the Hong Kong SAR government, conveyed to federal Minister of Justice, Robert Nicholson, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and other senior judiciary, legal, business, academic figures and government officials during his three-day visit to Ottawa and Toronto last week.

via Ottawa Business Journal.