This is a classic forum shopping case brought by a Canadian company against an international company headquartered in Seattle, with neither company having any c

This is a classic forum shopping case brought by a Canadian company against an international company headquartered in Seattle, with neither company having any connection whatever with the venue (Eastern District of Texas) other than that MS Word happens to be sold there. This particular district is famous for being wildly receptive to patent claims and is therefore used routinely by patent trolls searching for large verdicts and, indeed, a $240M verdict (plus add-on items totaling $50M), plus a permanent injunction, is a pretty big prize for "custom XML" technology that constitutes a very minor part of Word's functionality. Not that there isn't a form of justice in Microsoft being bitten by patent abuses when it has benefited for years from patent abuses that it has heaped upon others.