The BBC reports that a US federal court has filed an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling Word. This is in addition to an order by a US federal court that Microsoft pay over $290m for “wilfully infringing on a patent by Canadian firm i4i”. The patent in question relates to the use of the Extensible Mark-up Language otherwise known as “XML”. In 1998, I4i filed a patent that set out ways of “manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other” thus invoking XML as a means of allowing users to format text documents. However, the court found in a jury trial that Microsoft, which uses XML extensively in some of its Word programs e.g. Word 2007, had infringed the patent.
As a result of the ban (injunction), Microsoft have now been prohibited from “selling, offering to sell, and/or importing in or into the United States” any versions of the software that can open custom XML files (with file extensions .xml, .docx, or .docm). They now have 60 days to comply with the injunction although a spokesman for the organisation, Kevin Kutz, insists that the ruling is wrong and Microsoft will “appeal the verdict”.
What? I thought That MS word was solely Microsoft product. Hmm…I think Microsoft need to work out this problem as fast as it can, because its certainly going to hamper the sale of MS word. It is an excellent software and i am glad i have it because it do every editing for me on my docs. who the hell is i4i and where it was from so many years?
I don’t think this make any sense. MS Word is having a lot of users and it is just used as a good tool for document work. I believe in one thing and that is when someone says something bad about someone then it means that the person is on the way towards success. So it is a successful application and may be because of that they are facing such problems.
Don’t you think that strange thinks are happening. I have manufactured something and somebody is stopping me to use it at all. I don’t understand these legal issues, if you do please make me understand in the lay man’s language as well.
xml was already part of ms word, then why there trying to sue now?
Actually when something gets successful everyone wants to claim for it. Probably this case is one of the example for it.
These things can be really messy sometimes. I’m quite sure we haven’t heard the last of this. Will keep you posted on any developments.
I’m sure that Microsoft has ‘stolen’ many ideas from other tech firms before. There is no way you can have that many original ideas within one company. I’m sure they will figure something out that will still allow them to sell their product. Wouldn’t be surprised to see them acquire this company and make this problem go away.
I bet you’re right, 141 will be bought out or paid off by Microsoft, Word will continue to be sold.
Anyone want to buy a “rare” copy of office 2007? it can open xml documents and all sorts 😛
Like others I too want to ask a simple but confusing question that why Microsoft was banned because I have done bit of study and found and know that MS Word belongs to Microsoft. Then why this is happenning?