A federal jury in California has slapped Microsoft Corp. with a nearly $9 million judgment in a patent infringement lawsuit filed by a Guatemalan inventor. Carlos Amado, 50, sued the Redmond-based software maker in March 2003, claiming Microsoft infringed on a patent he received in 1994 for software linking the company's Excel spreadsheet and Access database programs. Amado developed the program while he was a student at Stanford in 1990 and offered to sell it to Microsoft two years later, but the company declined, according to the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, which represented Amado. Amado, who had sought $500 million in damages, alleged in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., that Microsoft added an application that mimicked his software to the company's 1995 version of Office, the suite of programs that includes Excel and Access.

Posted by GEN-ERIC at 12:16:31 am into the following categories: In The News

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