Frank Scherkenbach, a principal in Fish & Richardson's Boston office, was lead counsel for Microsoft, along with Fish & Richardson attorneys Craig Smith and Jennifer Bush. The plaintiffs were represented by Mintz Levin.

The case was about a new feature in Office XP (now also in Office 2003) called "Smart Tags." Smart Tags allow users to retrieve information from outside their present document (like a person's address from Outlook) that is related to something typed in the document (like a person's name in Word) with a minimum number of clicks or keystrokes.

This was the second case claiming that Microsoft's Smart Tags infringed patent rights. In the first case, HyperPhrase Technologies sued Microsoft in federal court in Wisconsin. Fish & Richardson also proved that the first case had no merit.

In the Rhode Island case, Arendi had alleged that Smart Tag technology infringes its patent, relating to a particular method for automatically executing a search for information related to a name or address typed into a document. Jurors agreed that the technology covered by the Arendi patent is fundamentally different from Smart Tags and that Microsoft did not infringe Arendi's patent.

Fish & Richardson is a national law firm with 300 attorneys in eight offices serving clients in three core areas: intellectual property, litigation, and corporate law. The firm handles more patent litigation than any other law firm in the world. More information is at www.fr.com.