Microsoft has 60 days to quit selling Word or cough up some cash

Quincy Pince-Nez
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August 12, 2009
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A court in patent-friendly Eastern Texas has issued an injunction stating Microsoft will have to stop selling and demonstrating Microsoft Word within 60 days.  At issue are the rights to XML in reading and writing XML, DOCX, and DOCM files.  Presumably, this affects Mac Office 2008 customers as well.

The judge ruled that Microsoft Word’s XML systems violate patents by Toronto-based i4i Inc and specifically their 1998 XML patent #5,787,449.  MS will have to pay i4i about $290 million in damages.

Realistically speaking, Microsoft will have to cough up some cash and/or file appeals to get this thing sorted out, something they have developed a real knack for over the years.

 

Comments (13)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 12, 2009 - 7:57am

You spelt Toronto wrong.
Andrew.

Victoria, BC, Canada

admin | August 12, 2009 - 8:17am

something smelt fishy.  It has been amended!  Sorry T-Dot!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 12, 2009 - 1:54pm

and you spelled spelled wrong :)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 12, 2009 - 8:19am

Toronto!

MikiJ (not verified) | August 12, 2009 - 8:19am

I hate to be on Microsoft's side for anything, but these patent disputes are completely out of whack. The whole patent law has to be completely rewritten. As it is, soon I'll be hit with a lawsuit for breading, because somebody patented a particular way of exchanging gasses through a liquid.

ulfoaf | August 12, 2009 - 5:41pm

The US Patent office says you cannot a patent concept, only a device or process. Do the patents follow this? Absolutely not. There are so many patents for things that don't work. These prevent someone else from actually make similar devices that actually do work. It is the biggest hurdle in technology.

BTW, if you were using a now patented process before it was patented, you do not have to pay royalties.

Chris R (not verified) | August 12, 2009 - 9:52am

It would seem that Microsoft is getting hammered a lot these days. They have also produced a lot of unsuccessful product too. I don't feel sorry for Microsoft but I would like them to succeed.

Did you know that Bill Gates is one of the biggest philanthropist in the World?

ulfoaf | August 12, 2009 - 10:22am

I'd like to seem them survive by being innovative and writing good software, and most importantly, being concerned that their customers are satisfied. In my opinion, all of this has been lost since the release of Windows 95.

ulfoaf | August 12, 2009 - 10:19am

They should have.

For those of you who don't remember, WordPerfect was once the premier word processing software up until the early 90s. Then Word, nothing more than a buggy, poor man's imitation, came along and was given with Windows for FREE. Predictably, Word developed a large user base. Who was going to pay $200 when you had a free word processor? WordPerfect nearly dropped out of use, although it still exists. We all know Word is now a defacto standard, and it sure ain't free. If this is not noncompetitive behavior, I don't know what is. The story is the same for Lotus 123 (replaced by Excel) and Netscape (Explorer). Netscape was feared as a possible future competitor in the "Internet thing."

I never liked Word or Excel as well, and still consider them very user unfriendly, even after being stuck with them for 14 years. To make adjustments, you have to go through all kinds of various and buried menus. No usability improvements, but more features. I'm not saying I can't use them, I just don't like them. I never liked Clippy the Pinhead, either.

ulfoaf | August 12, 2009 - 10:57am

Novell owned WordPerfect at once point and sued MS in November 2004 for witholding technical information about Windows. They claimed they were hindered by this. I couldn't tell what the outcome was, maybe it is still on going. WP was nearly dead by then.

I see MS did pay out $536M to Novell about the same time,  in lieu of an anti-trust lawsuit over Novell Netware. That probably was over Workgroups for Windows. Netware is another former great.

Peruchito (not verified) | August 12, 2009 - 12:48pm

i thought corel bought WP (and made it into crap)

anyone remember AMIPRO? now that was a beautiful word processor.

ulfoaf | August 12, 2009 - 5:43pm

Corel owns it now. Haven't used it for years.

sunstrider (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 4:27am

Why I am not surprised??

I want, to work with another system, for my essay writing, but I could not find any useful. Maybe i shroud really buy Mac for myself....