Posted on 12/24/2009 1:17:25 AM PST by myknowledge
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Microsoft lost its appeal Tuesday against a lower court ruling that it had infringed the patent of small Canadian software company i4i, proving that the fight is not always to the strong.
A three-judge federal appellate panel ordered the software giant to stop sales of its popular Word word processing program in its current form on Jan. 11 and to pay i4i $290 million.
"In this case, a small company was practicing its patent, only to suffer a loss of market share, brand recognition, and customer goodwill as the result of the defendant's infringing acts," the ruling said.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
East Texas Patent Trolling.
The patent affects OpenOffice too, as well as any other word processing program that uses XML.
Using XML to represent a document is obvious to any person ‘skilled in the art’ of computer programming, as the patent lingo goes.
These idiotic combo patents (use A to create B) make practically impossible nowadays to write a non-trivial software application without tripping over a dozen of them. This includes writing freeware for Linux.
I own one of these idiot combo patents: Use SQL to create a user password database. My boss made me apply for it, and I was astonished to see it granted.
Well, my word!
I didn't see any. They are simply saying the little guy prevailed against the most successful company in the world, according to many.
Microsoft is evil
They will pay $290 million and get nothing. Why would i4i sell?
They have now changed the code so as to be in compliance. Why would they buy?
OpenOffice.org (a Word type program that is a free download) works just fine for me.
As much pleasure as can be derived from schadenfreude, software patents are just a bad idea. Copyright is sufficient to protect software authors.
An interesting side note to this.
I work as an editor for scientific and academic papers. A number of journals do not accept papers in Word 2007 because of coding issues. Authors are directed to save their work in an earlier version of Word before submission.
Yeah, Bill Gates and Micro$oft is soooooo eeeevvvvilllll!
That's about $700 overpriced. Office 2007 should have been a capital crime for MS.
What really ticks me off about the new OOXML format, is how much larger the files are. It’s really a pain to process the files, compared to a similar file in the old format, if you write programs to process Excel files. In my Java programs, it blows the memory right out of the water when I try to process an Excel file in the new format.
Survival of the fittest.
(Hence my current tagline.)
Okay, thanks. I like the Open Office idea but have nagging doubts about compatibility with Word. Like if I sent an Open Office version of an important document, will it be guaranteed to open and render correctly on the other end.
It smells of “power to the people” ‘60s, leftist nonsense.
Perhaps, were one thinking along those lines. I wasn't at the time. I was seeing it differently.
This morning I am seeing it as more of the folly of patenting common sense ideas and coming back years later and saying "Gotcha!" While I am thinking about it I should run out and patent the greeting, "Hello."
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