Shocker Of The Day

• A Texas judge ruled this morning that Microsoft cannot sell one of its flagship products, Word, in the United States because of patent infringement. Yes, you heard correct: Microsoft cannot sell Word, the judge ruled.
• Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ordered a permanent injunction that “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML”.
• Seattle PI quotes “XML essentially is a programming language that allows users to customize the underlying format of their word-processing documents, for example, and makes them readable across different word-processing programs. The ability to read and write XML documents is an integral feature of Microsoft Word. In its complaint (PDF), i4i alleges Microsoft willingly violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) on a method for reading XML. The company, whose Web site advertises that users can ‘Create and edit XML content in Microsoft Word,’ helps clients work with XML”
• Along with Microsoft losing Word, Judge Davis also ordered Microsoft to pay i4i more than $290 million in damages. Microsoft said “We are disappointed by the court’s ruling,” Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz said in a statement. “We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict.” It is unknown in Microsoft will be able to get this ruling turned around.

Tagged as: lawsuit, Microsoft, word