Microsoft Must Face Patent Infringement Suit Involving OneDrive

Microsoft Corp. saw a federal district court deny its motion to dismiss a suit claiming its OneDrive program infringes on patents held by Datanet LLC.

Microsoft said in its motion for judgment on the pleadings that Datanet’s patents were invalid because they represented abstract ideas and lacked any inventive concept. But Judge Jamal N. Whitehead of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington said in a Monday opinion that Datanet’s concepts were patentable because they improved computer capabilities.

The patents stipulated that manual backup computer systems contained gaps leading to the loss of data. To combat that ...