Posted on 08/12/2009 8:43:04 AM PDT by ShadowAce
A judge on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word, one of its premier products, in its current form due to patent infringement.
Judge Leonard Davis of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML", according to a statement released by attorneys for the plantiff, i4i.
Microsoft did not immediately reply to request for comment but said in a statement that it planned to appeal the verdict.
Toronto-based i4i sued Microsoft in March 2007 alleging that the software giant violated its 1998 patent (No 5,787,449) for a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is considered a "page description language", with one of its key qualities being that it is readable by people, not just machines. Unlike HTML, which has predefined tags, XML allows developers and users to define their own tags for data, such as price and product.
In May, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the custom XML tagging features of Word 2003 and Word 2007 infringed on i4i's patent and ordered Microsoft to pay $200m (£120m) in the case.
In Tuesday's ruling, Microsoft was also ordered to pay an additional $40m for willful infringement, as well as $37m in pre-judgement interest. The order requires Microsoft to comply with the injunction within 60 days and forbids Microsoft from testing, demonstrating or marketing Word products containing the contested XML feature.
So you mean when I illegally downloaded it I not only illegally stole from Microsoft I stole from i4i?
> So you mean when I illegally downloaded it I not only illegally stole from Microsoft I stole from i4i?
Hmmm... how does that sync with the concept that you cannot steal stolen property?
XML has been around for what... 15 years?
microsoft can’t sell it.. so they can give it away for free. you did it the right way :)
Microsoft a crook? :)
Seriously though, XML has been around for awhile.
Does this mean I will get a refund for my Office 2007??? Cool, since I only wanted it for OneNote!
No, Microsoft stole it from i4i, so you were wrong to steal it from Microsoft. It was theirs, they'd stolen it fair and square!
The office I work in used to have Corel’s WordPerfect, which I loved. I could do wonders on it. Then they cheaped out and decided to settle for Microsoft Word, which I hate because it is awkward and counter-intuitive. And I’m not real fond of Mac’s word processing, either.
double tech ping
wonder if this affects ms works
I guess they’ll have to bundle Notepad with Office to replace Word. The “Standard Edition” will have a button link to Minesweeper on the Toolbar. The “Professional Edition” will have button links to the rest of the MS Games.
SGML since the mid-80s.
Microsoft led the charge to have software treated as a device rather than information, subject to patent, rather than copyright, so they get what they deserve.
Personally I think intellectual property law has stayed so far from it Constitutional intent that "piracy" is almost a justified act of civil disobedience, but I have some resentments born of the misbehavior of mathematics publishers.
My Office 2003 works just fine. 2007 is so bloated with crap they actually call it MS Office Space like the movie.
Damn this judge. Sell it anyway.
So who let them have a patent?
Time to investigate the examiners.
Apple died?
Office 2007 is basically UNUSABLE.
Wrong!
I downloaded the free Open Office suite for my own notebook. Works fine for me.
IIRC Time to Execute for Office 2007 is faster than any other office suite, don’t know why you have issues. Of course you could still be running a last century pc for all I know.
XML has been around for a while, but Word’s use of it in document files is new in Word 2007.
No it isn’t.
My god you people are full of your hyperbole. The exact same functionality is there between versions, right down to shortcut keys, time to execute is faster than any other office suite and there are more features.
The biggest complaint are the people who have learning disabilities and can’t figure out how to use the ribbon interface.
2. In order for the injunction to stand, i4i must demonstrate “irreparable harm” if Microsoft continues to sell Word. But there is no such irreparable harm, since the courts can simply factor-in additional amounts Microsoft must pay should they eventually lose the appeal.
3. There is a pretty high probability that the i4i patent will (eventually) be invalidated.
4.Even if you add up the $200 million from the original verdict plus the additional damages the judge tacked on, for Microsoft that's still less than a week's worth of profit. If Microsoft think they're going to lose the appeal, Microsoft will just license the technology for say $100 mil (sorry, “an undisclosed amount”) which i4i will happily take.
And they removed a number of the features from 2003. They were so interested in catering to the lowest common denominator, they made a product that really sucks for any type of power user.
(Oh, and Apple mostly uses a proprietary hardware model.)
BTW, why is Apple, originally a hardware company that does makes most of its money on computers, mp3 players, G3 phones, and now the fifth largest music retailer in the U.S. the foil for Microsoft, as software house? My snipe at the proprietary software model was shot from the UNIX/Linux open-source camp.
WTF you blathering on about?
I use Office 2007 every single day. It's one of the most useable, most productive pieces of software out there. That's why it's one of the highest selling software packages on the planet, even at retail.
Where do you Microosft-hating Apple crazies come up with this stuff anyways?
Microsoft Tourette's
Amen for Word Perfect! Still use it.
parsy, who can’t figure out Word on a lot of things
What, pray tell, did they remove?
I can guarantee you they added far more than they removed.
It’s called group think.
They are saying what they think the group wants to hear.
Yes!! WordPerfect will always be the best. We all got sucked in to Word when Gates was pre-installing that crap in new computers and I’ll never forgive Gates for that. MS Word is like a toy word processor compared with WP.
No kidding. In college (mid-90s) I used WordPerfect and it was very user-friendly. I remember formatting page numbers (e.g., on documents with multiple sections) as one of the things that WordPerfect did intuitively while getting MS Word to do it was like pulling teeth.
I love Excel 2007.
Has a million rows instead of 65,000, and I can now fit whole pages of text into a single cell, and format it better (my office uses Excel inappropriately, as you can probably tell, but at least MicroSoft is making it easier for us to do so!).
I like Word 2007 too, and Outlook 2007—all of it is an improvement over what I had before (2000 I think).
Good Grief!!! What kind of insanity is this?
I want a patent for the lower-case "e". I demand it.
IDIOTS! XML is a 50-year-old protocol. It is in general public use.
Do you honestly believe anyone that is critical of MS is an “Apple crazy”? FWIW, if he were an “Apple crazy” he would probably be using Office 2008 not 2007, which actually isn’t as usable as 2004 because they removed support for VBA.
The first office suite I ever owned was Borlands, which came with WordPerfect. The prepackaged Word for Windows couldn’t compete in what it could do. However Word for Windows was meant for those who didn’t need or want to spend money on something so basic as a word processor. The fact is though that Corel couldn’t compete feature for feature against the full office suite that MS offered.
If it makes you feel better why don’t you go and purchase Word Perfect, you know they still make it under the Corel name brand.
For the record, I do professional development training in both these versions of MS Office. Did in 2000 and 2002, too. 2007 is not designed for power users. It's designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Dude! Up your dosage, get a life, and learn to recognize humor. You’ll enjoy life more.
This is not “critical of Micrsoft”. This is downright trolling. Pure and simple
” if he were an “Apple crazy” he would probably be using Office 2008 not 2007”
What makes you think he is evens using ANY MS Office version at all? This kind of stupid trolling is all too common from the Apple crazies on every single web site where stories about Microsoft are written and they usually use the exact same language “unusable”, clunky”, and all the usual Apple fanboy talking pints, to describe Microsoft products they NEVER even used before.
This stupidity is getting too much. Time for these losers to find something better to do with their stupid lives.
“The first office suite I ever owned was Borlands.”
I had “Sprint” by Borland for a long time back in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. Very powerful!!
Its a darned strange concept to steal a language...
I have yet to see you think anything is just critical of MS though. It is all downright trolling to you.
Because MS Office is the standard and most people with Macs I know at least have it installed.
I would find it very hard to believe that anyone has never used MS Office. Maybe not the newest version, I have only had passing experience with it where I didn’t find it as immediately usable as 2003, but I didn’t have time to adapt to the ribbon interface either. I do find Office for Mac more usable than Office for Windows, both in their newest and previous incarnations.
OneNote has become an addictive drug for me. It’s the ONE thing that has kept me from using Linux entirely. I especially like using it on my Tablet PC.
Office 2003 is good, although I prefer Office 2000 and prior versions. 2007 is an abortion, designed by some huggy-feely, kissy touchy, warm and fuzzy, new age software designer.
My wife’s (at) work PC died two week ago. They gave her a brand new one...loaded with office 2007. She told the boss that if they couldn’t give her 2003 or earlier to use, then she would have me download and use OpenOffice. The Director of IT at her company is a major Microsoft fanboy, and they have licensing issues (he says) preventing them from using earlier versions now. He says they lease all equipment and the pre-installed MS software. So, I went in through her VPN and installed OO. Now there is an ongoing argument between the DIT and her boss, because he backed my wife and said the OO stays. LOL
I didn’t know about it until last year when is saw some fellow students using it. Looks very useful and of course not available in the Mac version. Word has a Notebook view that seems very similar but not quite loaded with all the features. I’m trying to tell myself that I can make do with it instead of buying 3rd party note taking software right now. Some of them look amazingly useful.
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