Artwork: Chip Taylor
Microsoft's move was expected, as it had previously said it would appeal the verdict and the injunction that resulted from a patent infringement case it lost last May.Posted on 08/20/2009 7:19:00 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Microsoft late Tuesday warned of "massive disruptions" to sales of Office, as well as to partners such as Best Buy, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, if the injunction that prevents it from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 in the U.S. after Oct. 10 is not set aside.
In an emergency motion filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals, Microsoft asked that the injunction imposed last week by U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Davis be stayed, or temporarily put on hold, while its appeal is heard.
Artwork: Chip TaylorMicrosoft's move was expected, as it had previously said it would appeal the verdict and the injunction that resulted from a patent infringement case it lost last May.
"Microsoft and its distributors (which include retailers such as Best Buy and OEMs such as HP and Dell) face the imminent possibility of a massive disruption in their sales," Microsoft argued in the motion. "If left undisturbed, the district court's injunction will inflict irreparable harm on Microsoft by potentially keeping the centerpiece of its product line out of the market for months," the firm's lawyers added. "The injunction would block not only the distribution of Word, but also of the entire Office suite, which contains Word and other popular programs."
The patent infringement case brought by Toronto-based i4i in 2007 resulted in a $290 million judgment against Microsoft and an injunction that bars it from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 after Oct. 10 unless they're altered.
Microsoft also complained to the Court of Appeals that while it has taken steps toward the latter solution, that, too, puts an unfair burden on the company. "Already, Microsoft is expending enormous human and financial capital to make its best effort to comply with the district court's 60-day deadline,"...
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
you would be surprised how judges are just monkey see monkey do when it comes to tech.
Since federal courts moved to paperless judges tend to be more tech using but this does not change to tech knowlege. Think of the employee who only knows how to use the office computer and nothing else.
The judge could very well not know what XML is or means or is structured and how that matters or how unique or not unique that is. The judge might have just seen big microsoft and little canadian.
that said, what is so special about xml?
Overrated, and priced to match!
Microsoft should just revert back to the older version of Word, which works just fine and not loaded with a bunch of garbage that is mostly useless.
Is that why Microsoft Office continues to be the best selling office software at retail year after year for decades, bringing in billions of dollars every year in sales and profits, as consumers DECIDE by themselves to dip into their pockets and buy it?
That free market disagrees with your rant.
Court order should have been more specific. Allow MS to ship word but require the XML function that violates the patent to be removed (not just disabled). Further, require MS issue a patch that likewise removes the function from all existing Word installs on their next patch cycle.
The revamped interface of Office 2007 was an unnecessary change for the sake of change, that prompted me to delete not only Office 2007 but also the equally unwelcome Vista Ultimate from an almost brand-new computer that was given to me. That machine runs Ubuntu and Open Office very nicely and are good enough for my needs. I’ll keep my money and Micro$not can keep their change.
So--you don't actually save your documents, then? Why use a word processor at all?
You could save in a MS proprietary format.
That's the issue. MS has adopted this form of XML as their proprietary format. As a result, millions of documents have already been saved in that format. What do we do with those docs?
Screw ‘em.
I'm very pro-business and anti-lawyer in general. But, in this case, I agree with you.
Microsoft has been above the law WAAAAY too much for my liking.
That said, I will be VERY surprised if M$ doesn't find some underhanded way to make this problem disappear.
1. The original injunction is a just normal part of the court proceedings of this kind, as is Microsoft's appeal to have the injunction set aside.
It's almost certain that the Appeals Court will stay the injunction until the appeal is resolved (which could take many many years).
2. To elaborate, 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. At this point it's quite possible that the patent itself may (eventually) be invalidated based on “prior art”. There are probably prior arts in the multimedia processing world (audio / image / video) which are analogous enough in nature to invalidate this patent.
4. Both sides may consider settling during the appeals process. 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 at any point in the proceedings, Microsoft think they're going to lose the appeal, they can simply license the technology for say $100 mil (sorry, “an undisclosed amount”) which i4i will happily take.
That kind of thing has happened lots of times in these kinds of cases.
You could either complain to MS and get them to settle and license the technology or use a conversion program that can read MS format and convert it to a more standard format.
The only issue I see with your analysis is that it depends on when the patent was filed. I've heard that i4i filed for the patent in the late 90s. That would make it very plausible that it's valid.
After a very quick read, it looks like the company invented a way of embedding the style code in a different section of the document from the content code. If you've ever tried to paste content from MS Word into an HTML editor, you can get an idea of what they're talking about.
For the record, I work intimately with a couple of flavors of XML every day and I realize that XML is not HTML. However, the concept is similar.
I would have to see an example of the plaintiff's documents to understand it further. On the other hand, embedded CSS in an HTML seems to me to be very much the same idea. Did MS steal the plaintiff's invention or did MS base it's idea on embedded CSS and just apply it to it's own version of XML?
Yeah?
Is that why a company, that is based in Canada, just across the border from Microsoft in Washington State, decided to go aaaaaaall the way down to Texas, to go judge shopping for in the most patent troll friendly state in the country?
“The court found that damages were $200M plus $40M for willfulness plus a bunch of other stuff, for a grand total of $290M. And now Microsoft has a real problem because they were so d@mn arrogant”
Ummm..Microsoft makes more than in just ONE week.
That figures is a rounding error to Microsoft. you gotta try a bit harder than that if you wanna take Microsoft down.
AFAIK, that doesn't matter. Whether or not you arrive at the same idea independently is irrelevant. He who patents first, wins.
Back off or we shoot Clippy! I see they’re going for the TBTF strategery. Not surprising since we’re all getting to pay for the last five batches of schlubs who were TBTF.
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