Court upholds patent ruling against Microsoft A federal appeals court ordered Microsoft Corp. to stop selling its Word program in January and pay a Canadian software company $290 million for violating a patent, upholding the judgment of a lower court. But people looking to buy Word or Microsoft's Office package in the United States won't have to go without. Microsoft said Tuesday it expects that new versions of the product, with the computer code in question removed, will be ready for sale when the injunction begins on Jan. 11. Toronto-based i4i Inc. had sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a tool in the popular word processing program. The technology in question gives Word users an improved way to edit XML, or code that tells the program how to interpret and display a document's contents. A Texas jury found that Microsoft Word willfully infringed on the patent. Microsoft appealed that decision, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Tuesday upheld the lower court's damage award and the injunction.
Court upholds patent ruling against Microsoft
Koss employee accused of taking $4.5 million A longtime financial executive with Koss Corp. was accused Monday of embezzling more than $4.5 million from the Milwaukee company and using the money to pay for shopping sprees at upscale stores. Sujata Sachdeva, vice president of finance at the headphones manufacturer since 1992, was charged with wire fraud. She appeared in federal court late Monday and was released on an unsecured bond. Sachdeva, of Mequon, Wis., is accused of using embezzled money to pay credit card charges for $1.3 million in clothing from a single store in Mequon, $130,000 in jewelry and $600,000 from a bridal store in Milwaukee.
Deal means closure of cardmaker plant American Greetings Corp. said Tuesday that it reached a deal with party goods maker Amscan Inc. and will stop making its own party goods. The move will result in a plant closing in Kalamazoo, Mich., and about 225 facility-related job cuts. About a dozen jobs also will be eliminated from the greeting card company's Cleveland headquarters.
UK OKs Ticketmaster/Live Nation union Britain's anti-monopoly regulator on Tuesday said it had approved the proposed merger of Live Nation Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. The U.S. Justice Department and Canadian regulators have yet to declare whether they will sanction the merger.
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Health care spending rose by 15%, driven by higher prices. Officials say solutions are needed to prevent Minnesotans from being priced out or delaying care they need.
