A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. filed last year by HyperPhrase Technologies.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb granted Microsoft's request to dismiss the lawsuit, which contended that the company's Office XP suite of business software infringed on HyperPhrase's patents on storage and retrieval of data.
Microsoft's word processor and Excel spreadsheet — included in the Office suite — have a feature called "Smart Tags" for linking text in one document to information in others or on the Internet.
For example, if you type a stock symbol into Excel and have an online connection, you can have a stock quote for that company automatically appear, along with the latest company news.
But the plaintiffs failed to show that the products use the technologies that HyperPhrase holds patents for, the judge found.
|