Technology Lab / Information Technology  Microsoft to fight $200
million patent infringement ruling  Microsoft has been ordered
to pay i4i $200 million for infringing on one of …  A federal
jury in the hotbed of patent litigation, Tyler, Texas, has
ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million to Canadian company i4i
for infringing on its patent. The Toronto-based company holds a
patent for processing electronic documents using embedded codes
that provide instructions on how information appears. The amount
is the exact sum that i4i requested, but the judge can still
increase the fine if it is found that Microsoft willfully
infringed on the patent, which is what i4i originally claimed.
Furthermore, i4i can also demand a court order that blocks
Microsoft from further using the technology.  Word 2003 and Word
2007 use extensible markup language (XML) for encoding and
customizing the XML in a way that i4i believes infringes on its
patent. While both sides agreed that many people use Word
without ever using custom XML, Mi