A judge has ordered Microsoft to stop selling Microsoft Word products in their current form in the US, but legal appeals or technical workarounds make an actual halt of sales unlikely.
The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas gave Microsoft 60 days to comply with the injunction, which forbids Microsoft from selling Word products that let people create custom XML documents, according to i4i. The ruling, which also includes additional damages Microsoft must pay, are related to a patent infringement suit filed by i4i.
The most common versions of Word on the market now, 2003 and 2007, both allow users to create custom XML documents.
Microsoft did not reply to questions about the affect the injunction will have on it and its ability to sell Word in the US. In a statement it said it planned to appeal the verdict.
An appeal could stay the injunction but even if the injunction stands, Microsoft could potentially strip the functionality from Word or possibly build a workaround.
The ruling is unlikely to affect anyone any time soon, said Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "It's going to take a long time for this kind of thing to get sorted out," he said.
Custom XML allows people to create forms or templates such that words in certain fields are tagged and then can be managed in a database, said Loudon Owen, a spokesman for i4i. Large companies and government agencies, for example, might create such templates.
I4i's patent covers technology that lets end users manipulate document architecture and content.
In a March 2007 suit, i4i charged Microsoft with willfully infringing its patent. Earlier this year, a jury in the Texas court ordered Microsoft to pay i4i $200 million for infringing the patent.
Owen said that if the injunction stands, end users who use custom XML in Word will have to find another way to create templates. "Hopefully you're going to call us because our intention is to support custom XML," he said.
The judge also ruled that Microsoft should pay an additional $40 million for willful infringement of the patents and over $37 million in prejudgment interest. That brings total damages to more than $290 million.
Comments
Arcless said: I cant put my finger on it at the moment but Im sure that MS was forced to included an XML capability in Word as a requirement following an EU ruling to make it easier for other software packages to work with the MS Word document format Now Im no design rights expert but it looks like MS is being penalised in the USA for complying with an EU regulation
John said: David you dont even know what you are talking aboutThis relates to the custom xml file format Word recently acquired or should I say knowingly ripped-offThere are a lot of questionable patent claims for sure This isnt one of them This is valid claim from a company that has been in business selling the technology for some timeMicrosoft got caught at doing what it does best copying technologies refusing to pay for them calling it their own and labeling it as Microsoft innovation
David said: Does anyone feel as I do that all these court rulings over frivoulous things like this are getting a little out of hand honestly Word has been around since the day dot and has many file formats you could save documents in and now in the year of 2009 a judge just now decides decides they cant Sell word because of a file formatMaybe that same judge should rule on Apple opening up itunes to include tunes that can be used with other MP3 players attached to it rather than just the ipod