Microsoft went down to VirnetX Holding Corp. in a court battle over a patent infringement lawsuit on Tuesday. The software giant's loss has resulted in a gain of $105 million to the Scotts Valley, California based software company with the result that the stock of the latter jumped almost 43 per cent following the verdict.

The jury is still out on whether Microsoft willfully infringed on VirnetX's technology and what would be the size of the fine if that were the case. With Microsoft hot in denial the award could be triple the existing sum if the allegation were proved. This could be the largest award against the software giant overtaking the $290 million it had been forced to pay in damages to Toronto based i4i Inc in another patent violation case when it was discovered that Microsoft's word processing software infringed on one of its patents.

Terming the verdict 'factually unsupported', Microsoft is set to appeal the decision.

"We respect others' intellectual property, and we believe the evidence demonstrated that we do not infringe and the patents are invalid. We believe the award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict", said Kevin Kutz, spokesman for Microsoft.