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The case was brought by TV Interactive Data (TVI), a Californian company specialising in video on demand technology. TVI claims that the Autoplay features in Windows 95 and all subsequent versions, which automatically runs applications on loading a CD, infringes its patents.

Microsoft has claimed that prior art made the patent invalid, but Judge Jeffrey

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White has ruled that the case should be heard.

'While we are disappointed with the Court's decision, we remain very confident in our case,' a Microsoft spokesperson said.

TVI claims that 'AutoPlay technology' was invented by its own Peter Redford and Donald Stern while they were developing an interactive educational device for children in the early 1990s. Their 'autostart driver' was a set of hardware or software instructions that would tell a computer, once a CD-ROM was inserted, to look for a file with a predetermined name.

The US Patent Office awarded TVI patent 5,795,156 on 18 August 1998 ('Host Device Equipped with Means for Starting a Process in Response to Detecting Insertion of a Storage Media') and a further related patent (number 6,249,863) on 29 June 2001.

TVI filed the lawsuit in May 2002, and a trial is scheduled for later this year.

You can read a PDF of TVI's legal complaint here.