Whatever else you may want to say about Microsoft Corporation, they certainly know how to overcome an adverse jury verdict in a patent infringement case. Of course, sometimes the plaintiff goes out of its way to help them.

In a recent case, Uniloc USA, Inc. and Uniloc Singapore Private Limited v. Microsoft Corporation, the jury found the patent-in-suit valid and infringed. They found the infringement to be willful. They awarded the plaintiffs damages of $388M – before any enhancement.

Recently, two giant corporations spent millions of dollars in a courtroom argument primarily directed to the value of a “date-picker” – we’re speaking here about a “graphical user interface tool,” not a mechanical device for harvesting dates or an on-line service for matching up persons of opposite sexes. Lucent Technologies, Inc. et al. v. Gateway, Inc. et al.