Microsoft loses Excel Patent Case

Author: Jason Cundall
Published: 9th June 2005
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Microsoft is now $9m poorer, thanks to the ruling, but it could have been worse.

Microsoft is now $9m poorer, thanks to the ruling, but it could have been worse.

A US court has awarded $9m worth of damages to a Guatemalan coder who claimed that Microsoft had illegally used code he had developed to transfer data from Excel to Access:

Microsoft has been found guilty of patent infringement and ordered to pay a Guatamalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado almost $9m in damages.

The US District Court of Central California court ruled that Microsoft had infringed on his intellectual property and ordered it to pay him $8.96m.

This figure relates to software sold between March 1997 and July 2003 - Judge David Carter may review this figure to include software sold since 2003, according to Reuters.

More from the Register here.

They may be disapointed to have lost, but they must be breathing a small sigh of relief that it's only $9m, and no the $500m claimed - especially as they have two more copyright infingment cases to fight...

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Microsoft loses Excel Patent Case

Guatemalan coder wins Excel patent infringment case, and Redmond is ordered to pay up.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/06/09/MS_Excel_Patent/1


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