Toronto-based tech company i4i Inc., which last year won a $290 million patent verdict against Microsoft over the use of custom XML technology in Word, issued a news release today announcing that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed the validity of the patent at the center of the case -- again.

"Put simply Microsoft lost the trial, lost the appeal, and lost the reexamination. The PTO agreed with i4i. i4i's patent is clearly and unequivocally valid," says Loudon Owen, the i4i chairman, in the news release. "The protection of patents and intellectual property is vital to small inventors and pioneers like i4i, especially when confronted by giant infringing industry competitors like Microsoft."

Which is funny, because that's almost exactly the same thing Owen said when i4i announced essentially the same thing in May.

"Put simply: i4i's patent is clearly and unequivocally valid," he said at the time. "... The protection of patents and intellectual property is vital to small inventors and pioneers, like i4i, especially when confronted by giant industry competitors like Microsoft."

Is there an echo in here? Can something really become more unequivocal over time? "It's now unequivocally unequivocal," joked Owen via phone, laughing when I asked that question this morning.

Joking aside, Owen explained that the patent office has now issued a "reexamination certificate" concluding the reexamination process and reinstating the patent -- formally doing what it signaled it was going to do a couple months ago. In other words, if Microsoft was up a creek before, it's now officially up a creek.

The next question is whether Microsoft will appeal the court verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court. The company would need to file for an appeal by Aug. 27. Microsoft has removed the custom XML feature from Word, allowing it to continue selling the program despite an injunction, but the company says there are larger principles at stake in the case, not to mention the rather sizable monetary judgment.

In a statement this morning, Microsoft said, “We continue to believe there are important matters of patent law that still need to be properly addressed, and we are considering our options for going forward.”

Which just happens to be the exact same thing that Microsoft has been saying as far back as April. Good thing i4i doesn't have a patent on copy and paste.