Microsoft Corp. filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last week, asking a judge to invalidate several patents that are the subject of infringement suits filed by WebXchange Inc. against three large companies over their use of Microsoft's Visual Studio development tools.
WebXchange, an online transaction services provider in Menlo Park, Calif., sued Allstate Insurance Co., Dell Inc. and FedEx Corp. last March in federal court in Delaware. The lawsuits, all filed on the same day, claim that some of the online services offered by the three companies violate patents held by WebXchange. For example, WebXchange alleges that FedEx is infringing on three patents in an online system, launched four years ago, that lets customers send print jobs to its Kinko's stores.
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