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.
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.
WordPerfect is the most user-friendly word processing program out there and an absolute Godsend when you have to finish up a complex legal document in the next 15 minutes, copy it, get it to a courier and get it filed in court within the hour. Having to contend with the bloated, complex “Word” under these circumstances would drive anyone to drink.
What’s so great about OneNote...isn’t it just for notetaking?
Now how do you like that?
An Apple fanboy actually accusing someone of not being critical of Microsoft?
Hey, aren't you the guys that keep posting every non -Microsoft friendly piece of news you can find on the internet on here? Why on earth would I come into a thread where Apple fanboys are busy spreading as much anti-Microsoft FUD as they can, only to come join them in spreading even more disinformation?
“I would find it very hard to believe that anyone has never used MS Office”
A specific attack was made on Office 2007, not on any old version of Office. Now a piece of software that is “not usable" wouldn't be one of the top selling pieces of software at retail on the entire planet in both 2008, and 2009 YTD would it? I have a Businessweek from a few weeks ago at home, where the guy in charge of Office (another Canadian as turns out)said unit sales of Office 2007 at retail shot up by over 50%(I'll get back to you on that one) for 2008. “Unusable” software simply don't sell that well at retail, unless you are gonna tell me consumers are so stupid, they shell out a lot of money for something they can't even use, and just keep on doing it.
Many people do have older machines and under powered, less RAM equipped, newer ones.
But, you hit it with the “ribbon interface”, that’s just silly.
For those of us with “learning Disabilities” LOL, you can download an addin to bring back the 2003 Menu bar, it’s called MS Word 2007 Ribbon to Old Classic Menu, and there are others ranging in price from $15.95 to $49.95.
No. Not at all.
You can download a free 60 day trial at MS and see. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/default.aspx
That isn’t what I said. I said I have yet to see you think anything critical of MS is justified criticism. It is all trolling to you. In fact you say anything critical of MS is “disinformation”.
It certainly depends on the product. MS Office like MS Windows occupy a pretty unique spot in the marketplace. It would be very hard for any other product to unseat either one regardless of any faults they may have. “Unusable” is certainly hyperbole, but I have no problem believing that productivity for consumers took a serious hit adjusting to the new interface. I would imagine it would be hard for any product to be literally unusable especially in its 10th (I believe) version. However, that doesn’t mean everyone immediately found it more usable than the previous version. In fact, as I recall most reviews at the time panned the ribbon.
You are certainly sadly mistaken and given to hyperbole in the range of 5x of the facts. That is, as Wikipedia describes it, "The first, XML 1.0, was initially defined in 1998." The real world would call that roughly ten years ago, not fifty.
i4i presumably spent several years involved with the patent process, such that a 1998 date on a patent probably goes back 3-5 years prior to the date of the patent's granting, though I do note those were the Clinton years, so strange things could have happened.
You and SmokingJoe make an interesting tag team.
I'm from where much early computing grew mightily in the last fifty years or so, having been personally involved therein for most of those years, so please don't try to pull the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting.
It is my belief, born of my direct experience in such matters, that Microsoft has long been a very active player in attempts to abscond with the intellectual property of others, so I count these pesky, financially-weighed difficulties for them to be a sort of poetic justice.
HF
Really really hope Microsoft wins this one. Without it, no SVG, XUL, OpenOffice documents, GNUCash files, and much more. The XML patent will most likely be invalidated.
They all probably should be.
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