Microsoft loses XML patent case, Word, Office face 11 Jan ban

Jonny Evans
|
December 23, 2009
|
Share

Proving that sometimes the law does have teeth, even when dealing with the biggest corporations, a US Judge yesterday denied a Microsoft appeal, offering a judgment which could see Word and Office removed from sale starting January 11.

Canadian developer i4i first sued Microsoft in 2007, accusing the US company of illegally using its XML editing technology in the popular Word software line. In May, a Texas jury said Microsoft violated i4i's patent, and ordered it to pay i4i nearly $300 million in damages.

Microsoft filed various appeals and won a six-month delay in execution of the order to remove Word and Office in their current forms from sale. Now the Court of Appeals has upheld that injunction.

The case is likely to head two ways at this point - an appeal to the US Supreme Court or a settlement (financial deal) between Microsoft and i4i - otherwise Word and Office will be withdrawn from sale while various XML features are removed.

Microsoft will comply with the decision, a company spokesman said today. "We are moving quickly to comply with the injunction, which takes effect on 11 January, 2010," said Kevin Kutz, the director of public affairs for Microsoft, in an email.

“We expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date.  In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction,” the company said in a statement.

Comments (6)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 23, 2009 - 4:03am

I wish that Excel would be removed. Excel imo is the single application that has destroyed the free thinkers world by giving too much power to managers, bosses, financial advisors et al! (The list goes on, if you see what I mean?). 

Happy Xmas 2009! 

Baka Dubbs (not verified) | December 23, 2009 - 4:50am

Well, it my opinion Excel competes with Outlook as the best app in the basic office suite(lets not include access in this argument).  It just has so many freakin uses.  Budgeting, charting, amort schedules, setting up macros, consolidation info etc, etc, etc.  I could care less about word or powerpoint, there are servicable alternatives.  I actually have to take MS's side in this argument.  I had thought the whole point of XML was to be an open format that anyone could use.  The issue from my limited understanding is the ability to include meta data in the file that is not necassarily related to the basic spreadsheet or doc.  I personally would prefer that XML and all related functionality remain open.  Do we really want to force MS to create proprietary tools for XML that no one else can use?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 23, 2009 - 2:59pm

Excel competes with Outlook as the best app in the basic office suite

 

Outlook?  You're on acid.  Outlook is a great app for 2002, and a good one for 2005.  But for 2009, it is a laggard and a mess.

Excel?  I find it to be the least reliable of the office suite.  It crashes on me all the time.  Yes, I am a power user and I use it for all its worth.  But how come they can't make it reliable???

Access?  People love Access.  But I find it to be a security and reliability nightmare.  I've seen people do great things with Access, but then they completely drop the ball in terms of security.  Ug.  And Crash!  You're dead.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 24, 2009 - 8:38am

From the article: "by illegally using its XML editing technology in the popular Word software line."  At issue is not the XML file format -- there are XML file format versions of PowerPoint and Excel, too.  It's merely Word that's at issue here.  I haven't reviewed the claims beyond the scope of this article, but it would seem fair to believe that Microsoft did, in fact, violate a patent (whether knowingly or unknowingly.)  Patent law is extremely complete.  Microsoft owns a patent on the OpenXML format (which were not selected as the industry standard vs. OpenDocumentFormat).  If it were a file format or XML patent claim, yes, I could see your point here, as it is considered a widely adopted industry standard.  However, that's simply not what this case is about.  Otherwise, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of the suite would also be affected.  Likely, this will probably result in a settlement and patent use agreement.  Microsoft simply cannot afford to have corporations unable to license Office.  Furthermore, companies who already own/license Office could actually sue or demand a refund for the product, since it no longer does what the product was sold to do.  If Microsoft can change the way the code operates, and still use the XML file format, they can avoid the settlement, but I just don't see that happening in time to comply with the lawsuit.  If it's as simple as what they're saying here, Microsoft could (in theory) adopt a method to convert, rather than edit directly, from their old DOC format to OpenXML during the save process, but I'm merely speculating without seeing the full claims against Microsoft or the patent in question.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 23, 2009 - 9:05am

I know exactly what you mean.

Excel facilitates executives to reduce things like "use cheap plastic instead of metal in production" or "close American factory and offshore to China" to abstract line items in a spreadsheet. The decisions have been made long before someone ever thought about the impact of these decisions.

 

I guess you can't really blame the tool, but a lot of bad decisions can be traced back to investigation in a spreadsheet.

the Cappy (not verified) | December 23, 2009 - 5:33am

I haven't seen any actual reporting about what precisely the i4i patent covered (or more concretely, what MS Office feature infringed). They didn't patent XML. Just something about editing of it, I think. MS has made sounds that suggest they've already removed whatever feature was under contention, so it's doubtful there will be a pause in sales.