In a lawsuit filed in a Californian district court this week, Carlos Armando claims to have filed a patent in 1990 for a program he developed that links a single Excel spreadsheet to Microsoft’s Access database, allowing data to be transferred between the two applications.
Armando says he unsuccessfully tried to sell the program, which he wrote while a student at Stanford University, to Microsoft in 1992. He claims Microsoft then started to use the software in several versions of Access.
Lawyers for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft dispute Armando’s claims, saying that the company started work on similar software in 1989, almost three years before they were approached by Armando.
Based on a calculation of $2 per software copy sold, the damages could exceed $500m, according to Armando’s attorney.
The jury trial, which is expected to last a couple of weeks, is water off a duck’s back for Microsoft, which is also fighting over 35 other patent suits.
