Microsoft was ordered to pay $242 million (~RM1.15 billion) in damages to IPA Technologies for allegedly infringing the company's patent on the Cortana virtual assistant. The suit was filed in 2018 but only went to trial a week ago.
The IPA patent involves a voice recognition system to give instructions to a virtual assistant. Microsoft has already filed an appeal because it believes Cortana does not infringe any patents owned by the IPA. In addition to Microsoft, the IPA also filed suit against Google and Amazon. Their case against Amazon has already been dismissed while the case against Google has yet to be heard.
Cortana is no longer used by Microsoft as a virtual assistant in Windows or a smartphone application with support ending in 2023. It has been replaced by Bing and also the Copilot AI system.