A federal appellate court said Tuesday that a lower court erred in invalidating two patents for ergonomic computer keyboards, dealing a blow to Microsoft, which fought to have them voided after being sued by the holder of those patents.
TypeRight Keyboard sued Microsoft in July 1998, claiming that Microsoft's ergonomic keyboards, which split the keys into separate clusters for the left and right hands and have a large wrist-rest, violated TypeRight's "'441" and "'484" patents.
In June 2000, after Microsoft presented a document from a German company, Marquardt GmbH, that it said proved the concept of such a keyboard predated TypeRight's patent applications, a federal court in Southern California granted a Microsoft motion to invalidate the patents.
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