While big companies like Microsoft have their own patents to defend, they also get sued frequently, often by patent trolls. "They must be thinking they would rather have the standard lowered for these nonpracticing-entity cases," she said.

Pharmaceutical companies, such as Bayer, are hit less by nonpracticing entities and are more likely to assert their own patents, she said. "Big pharma really uses patents to keep away the [generic brands] so they don't want the standards lowered," she said.

The case dates back to 2007, when i4i sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing a patent covering a technology that lets users manipulate the architecture and content of a document. It said Microsoft infringed the patent by allowing Word users to create custom XML documents. In 2009, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found in i4i's favor and ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word products in the U.S. in their current form. Microsoft eventually removed the feature in order to continue selling the product.

The IDG News Service