The venue was, naturally, the Eastern District of Texas. Visto had sued Seven Networks there over the '192 and '221 patents; Seven settled.

Judge Folsom took his claim construction cue from Judge Ward's previous construction. Microsoft tried to deconstruct previous constructions to no avail. Ted Stevenson of McKool Smith, counsel for Visto: "Most of the terms in Visto's patents were previously construed in Visto's successufl litigation against Seven. Microsoft sought to change some of the previous constructions."

'192 was the parent of '221 and '679. '192 survived reexam, but that was before KSR.

Eight terms of Visto's patents were construed. The court ruled in Visto's favor for all but one term: "server," but Microsoft's edge for that is next to nothing at best. The adopted definition, "a computer or program that responds to commands or requests from a client," closely follows Microsoft's computer dictionary. Visto was aiming at a broader definition: "a computer that provides services to another computer."

For example, in defining the "internet" -

[T]he Court rejects Microsoft’s proposed limitation that “Internet” is a worldwide, publicly accessible network. Microsoft’s own dictionary definition makes no mention of a network that is publicly accessible. In fact, the dictionary states:

internet . . . 1. Any network that connects other networks; 2. Internet. a large network of this type that covers the U.S. and extends to Canada, Europe, and Asia, providing connectivity between governments, universities, and corporate networks and hosts.

Finally, the specifications of the patents do not support Microsoft’s proposal.

Of the contested terms and phrases of Microsoft's patents, the results were more evenly split, with Visto overreaching for narrowing limitations, while Microsoft missed the boat a few times with its unjustifiable semantic twists.

The two parties agreed a week ago to dismiss various claims and counterclaims, as well as dropping some claim construction requests.

Weirdly, though there were dismissals of charges of invalidity and unenforceability with prejudice, the companies claimed they could reassert those allegations in other actions.

Two months ago, Microsoft sought to have several of Visto's claims pitched for wandering into the weeds, but the judge found Visto's patents' balls in the fairway.

Visto is also playing patent poker with the patent hapless Research In Motion (RIM), who went down to the wire of an injunction early last year to settle with NTP for $612.5 million.