Microsoft has suffered another legal blow, yet again for patent infringement. A Texas court on Tuesday ordered the software giant to pay $105.75 million to VirnetX for violating two patents (6,502,135 and 7,188,180) pertaining to VPN technology, which has supposedly been used in products including Windows XP, Vista, Office, and Windows Messenger.
VirnetX initially sought $242 million, but the company's lawyer deemed the award "fair" and "will within the range that is reasonable." Nonetheless, since Microsoft was found guilty of willful infringement, the judge could as much as triple the jury's award.
Naturally, Redmond isn't pleased with the ruling and it plans to appeal. "We respect others' intellectual property, and we believe the evidence demonstrated that we do not infringe and the patents are invalid," said Microsoft's Kevin Kutz.
This loss comes just after Microsoft's failed appeal in the patent infringement case against Canadian company i4i. In that suit, Redmond faced a sales injunction against Word, and will have to dole out $290 million in penalties.