An eight-year conflict between the University of California and the Microsoft Corporation over the patent rights to a lucrative Web-browser technology has been settled out of court.
The fight, in the courts and at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, revolved around the discovery of a method for launching and displaying software plug-ins from Web browsers. The university owns the patent to the technology, which it licenses to Eolas Technologies Inc.
A federal jury in Chicago found Microsoft liable in 2003 for infringing the patent and ordered the company to pay the university and Eolas a total of $521-million. But a federal appeals court in 2005 suspended that judgment and sent the case back to the district court for a new trial.
