June 9, 2011 – The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s $290 million judgment against Microsoft for infringing i4i’s patent.  Under §282 of the Patent Act, patents are “presumed valid” and “the burden of establishing invalidity of a patent or any claim thereof shall rest on the party asserting such invalidity.”  The Court held that patent invalidity must still be proven by clear and convincing evidence and rejected Microsoft’s arguments that the standard should be reduced to preponderance of the evidence.