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 ...
Threatens industry indeed. People everywhere will have to adjust from a life of fonts jumping for no apparent reason.
I'm not familiar with this issue. What's it about?
And they will have to do without the poor user interface and memory hogging word processor. How will they survive.
Fascinating.
I believe it’s a reference to Office 2007 changing your font style by just cursoring over one of the graphical “styles” at the top of the interface.
I’ve gotten used to 2007, but Microsoft needs to cut down on the resource consumption. Office products are HOGS!
What exactly did Microsoft steal from i4i?
I’m trying to care. Really. But I can’t see MicroSoft urging mercy from the court for somebody that used an MS patent when they shouldn’t have... Live by the sword?
It seems that MS infringed on a patent in regard to it's XML document format.
Thanks
Or, MS could unlock existing installations of Word so that you could use it on multiple PC's.
That would be it. Very annoying.
I use Open Office. It does everything I need and it is FREE.
Back in 1993 Microsoft released DOS 6.2. Included in DOS 6.2 was a utility called Doublespace, which allowed a user to compress information on a drive so that more info could be packed into a drive. Those were the days when hard drive space was expensive, and a software solution was useful. Now of course hard drive space is cheap, the technology that Doublespace represented is more or less forgotten.
A company called Stac Electronics had disk compression software and sued Microsoft for patent infringement and WON. They were awarded $120 million. So what did Microsoft do?
1) Quickly it came out with DOS 6.21, which had no disk compression software, but other than that was identical to DOS 6.2. This complied with the judgment, which said Microsoft could not sell any product with Doublespace in it.
2) Then after some software reworking Microsoft came out with DOS 6.22, which had a utility called Drivespace in it, which did the same thing Doublespace did, but did not infringe the patent.
3) Then they settled with Stac Electronics for an approximately $40 million dollar investment in Stac Electronics stock and a $40 million dollar payment of royalties to Stac. Stac took the money and ran, probably feeling that $80 million now was a better deal than fighting Microsoft's appeal of the $120 million dollar judgment, and risking the appeals court overturning part or all of the judgment.
I expect Microsoft to dip into the money vault and buy off plaintiff I4I in a similar manner. That's cheaper for Microsoft than further litigation, since they have lost, and I4I cashes in its lottery ticket and gets its money fast and without further risk.
i4i (the plaintiff) doesn’t appear to be a patent troll, but rather a smaller company that Microsoft thought they could just ignore/run over. At least, that’s what I gather from what I’ve read.
My understanding also is that i4i asked for $10M, and even in the lawsuit only as for $10M with standard “other damages” language.
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.
Screw ‘em.
Not to worry, my Office 97 still works pretty well.
Same here. Downloaded "Open Office" and completely ditched Microsoft Office.
Or, as it has more appropriately been dubbed: Microsoft Tourette's.
I’ve found some problems in Open Office that make it difficult to work with using a MAC keyboard. I suppose MAC could add more keys or something, or maybe the Open Office folks could be a little more upfront about where the toggles are for the sliders. Plus, too much “blue” in the initial set up ~ that’s difficult for folks with weak blue vision, or for those who use viagra ~
Could someone explain to me how someone can “own” XML language? I’m curious.
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