Microsoft Mega-Verdict Appeal Primed to Test Patent-Damages Law

Microsoft Corp.’s promised appeal of a massive patent verdict is likely to bolster already fierce debates about the significance of foreign activities and apportionment in juries’ damages calculations.

Last week, a federal jury in Delaware awarded IPA Technologies Inc. $242 million after finding Microsoft’s Cortana infringed a patent that expired in January 2019. The core of the conflict over the apportionment of the royalty—carving out the value of non-infringing aspects of infringing products—hinges on how much of Cortana’s infringement occurred in Microsoft’s US-based servers.

The jury agreed with IPA that Cortana’s interface in the Windows 10 operating system infringed US ...