Microsoft hit with $242 million US verdict in Cortana patent lawsuit

Microsoft must pay patent owner IPA Technologies $242 million, a federal jury in Delaware acknowledged on Friday after determining that Microsoft’s Cortana digital-assistant instrument infringed an IPA patent.

The jury agreed with IPA after per week-long trial that Microsoft’s boom-recognition technology violates IPA’s patent rights in pc-communications instrument.

IPA is a subsidiary of patent-licensing firm Wi-LAN, which is collectively owned by Canadian technology firm Quarterhill and two investment companies. It provided the patent and others from SRI World’s Siri Inc, which Apple got in 2010 and whose technology it outdated in its Siri digital assistant.

“We remain assured that Microsoft by no formula infringed on IPA’s patents and must tranquil enchantment,” a Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged.

Representatives for IPA and Wi-LAN didn’t straight respond to a question for comment on the verdict.

IPA filed the lawsuit in 2018, accusing Microsoft of infringing patents related to non-public digital assistants and boom-based fully files navigation.

The case used to be later narrowed to order one IPA patent. Microsoft argued that it would now not infringe and that the patent is invalid.

IPA has moreover sued Google and Amazon over its patents. Amazon defeated IPA’s lawsuit in 2021, and the Google case is tranquil ongoing.