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The firm alleges that three of its patents relating to adding metadata to video have been infringed by Silverlight, which provides a method for users to tag video to enable better search and navigation.

Gotuit creates software that essentially performs the same function, and has customers including the National Hockey League in the US and Sports Illustrated magazine.

"Microsoft has infringed and is still infringing the patents," says a court document outlining Gotuit's complaint.

The attorney representing the case, Spencer Hosie, has a successful record appearing against Microsoft. He worked on Burst.com's successful patent infringement suit against the company which saw Microsoft pay a $60 million settlement.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.