Sometime this spring, most likely in April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case captioned Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited Partnership and Infrastructures for Information Inc. Should the court wind up ruling in Microsoft’s favor, it will upend a $290 million patent infringement award won by Canadian software maker i4i Inc. in 2009 and upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Even more important, such a ruling could fundamentally alter the country’s patent litigation landscape.
That’s because, in asking the court to reverse the i4i award, Microsoft’s appellate team — which includes lawyers from Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, as well as in-house attorney Andy Culbert — has homed in on one of patent litigation’s most crucial elements: the standard used to determine a patent’s validity. Microsoft, whose inability so far to get the i4i award tossed out post-trial is an anomaly in the company’s patent litigation efforts, wants that standard revised in a way that’s more favorable to defendants in infringement cases. In essence, the software giant wants the Supreme Court to lower the bar when it comes to what it takes to prove a patent invalid.
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