Cheers!
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.
How the heck did a company in Canada end up in a courtroom in Tyler, TX? Perhaps some judge shopping going on or is there a logical reason I'm not seeing.
Groan!
Yet another one of the anti-Microsoft foot soldiers decides to show his face.
For your information, while XML may haver been defined in 1998, XML itself was based on SGML (1986), which is itself is based on GML (1960s). So yes, it does go back nearly 50 years!
“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,”
That doesn't make their patent valid, if prior art can be shown. I don't see how they can go about granting a patent for a feature of a technical standard developed prior to the patent and based on another technical standard developed 20 years before that.
Like I said, there is every possibility of the patent itself being eventually invalidated if prior art can be shown, but even if Microsoft loses the appeal, the $200 million from the original verdict plus the additional damages the judge tacks on, would be still less than a week's worth of profit for Microsoft. It's a rounding error to Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Microsoft will appeal the original verdict, and will almost certainly get the Appeals court to stay the injunction until the appeal is resolved. That appeal could take so many years, without i4i seeing a penny.
I bought a brand new Dell laptop last week and the reason why it’s because they are the only ones who still sell XP on their pc’s and laptops. 2007 is the Vista of the Office line and sick and tired of the DRM and WGA pop ups.
Your belief, is not supported be facts.
What is true though, is that patent trolls in need of easy cash, almost always try and extort money from Microsoft first, because Microsoft has the deepest pockets. If these i4i vermin are not stopped, and they win, they are more than likely to hit a lot of other tech companies out there using the same “patent”, demanding even more cash
” so please don't try to pull the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting.”
That's exactly what you are trying to do. Normal Saul Alinsky technique, accuse others of exactly what you are doing yourself. Its not gonna work.
That's something I'd like to know myself. Meanwhile, how can I even trust a company that calls itself “i4i” which reads “Eye For Eye”.
Frankly, Apple is a POS. I much prefer Office 2003 ~ which was the last really useful piece of software Microsoft produced.
Gates should have been tarred, feathered and horsewhipped for '07.
Get with the picture.
Cheers!
:-)
Cheers!
I think if you take a good look for MIT, XML and HTML standards on the net you'll run into a couple of fellows who were regular posters at the old Doonesbury site (one of the earliest political commentary websites that wasn't just a bulletin board).
I am surprised Microsoft's lawyers didn't pursue their notes in DB as well as their extensive e-mail correspondence regarding XML ~
This goes back to 1996!
Utter unadulterated crap!
Now that definitely goes back 50 years.
Like to note for our reading audience that the "old farts" were actually about half a century younger when they encountered the FIRST COMPUTERS ON EARTH (outside of biosystems). Microsoft's work in court has probably "modified" some of our thoughts on patenting code ~ we just don't know it yet ~ but I'd imagine their lawyers are fully prepared to roll back the clock to defeat i4i.
You were on the Obama “truth team”, right?
You don't know me, so you can't begin to apply any slurring moniker such as "anti-Microsoft foot soldier to me," on the basis of facts I've seen first-hand and opinions I've had to form therefrom. You're just one of those out to destroy the credibility of his opponents, whether they deserve it or not. If you sleep well at night, it's undeserved.
Wikipedia notes, "Mr. Ron Lake started work on GML in the fall of 1998", so I guess your train of conjectures comes to yet another screeching halt, or perhaps you'll point us to the article whose prior art obviates the potential to patent a particular invention on XML, or not.
HF
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Generalized_Markup_Language
Generalized Markup Language (GML) is a set of macros that implement intent-based markup tags for the IBM text formatter, SCRIPT/VS. SCRIPT/VS is the main component of IBM's Document Composition Facility (DCF). A starter set of tags in GML is provided with the DCF product. GML was developed in the 1960s by Charles Goldfarb, Edward Mosher and Raymond Lorie (whose surname initials were used by Goldfarb to make up the term GML[1]).
Federal Judge from East Texas "OJ Trial and Patent Zone" oerders Microsoft to cease selling Microsoft Word because of a software patent infringement. PING!
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
According to Wikipedia, 11 years:
"The XML Working Group never met face-to-face; the design was accomplished using a combination of email and weekly teleconferences. The major design decisions were reached in twenty weeks of intense work between July and November 1996, when the first Working Draft of an XML specification was published.[20] Further design work continued through 1997, and XML 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation on February 10, 1998."Interestingly, the patent in this claim was filed on July 28, 1998... five and half months after the XML 1.0 recommendation was released.
This is just too funny.
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