Texas judge orders Microsoft to stop selling Word
August 18, 2009 by Valerie HelmbreckPosted in: Compliance, Hardware, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Software
Talk about your activist judges. A federal district judge in Texas handed down a ruling that could rock Microsoft’s world: According to the court, the company can no longer sell its market-dominant word processing software.
No, you don’t have to read the previous sentence again. Microsoft has to stop selling Word in the United States. In 60 days.
At least that’s what one judge in a rural corner of Texas says.
Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Tyler Division) ruled that the software giant has infringed on the patent of i4i Limited Partnership and Infrastructures for Information, Inc.
The suit brought by i4i back in March, 2007, alleges Microsoft willingly violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) on a method for reading XML.
XML is a programming language that lets users customize the underlying format of word-processing documents and makes them readable across different word-processing programs.
The ability to read and write XML documents is an integral feature of Microsoft Word.
The judge also ordered Microsoft to pay i4i $290 million.
Davis’ injunction, which becomes effective in 60 days, also prohibits Microsoft from selling future Word products that use the allegedly patented technology.
The judge’s ruling also bars Microsoft from testing, demonstrating, marketing or offering support for those future products.
The company can, however, support current users of Word.
Thanks for that, Judge Davis.
It goes without saying that Microsoft plans to appeal the ruling. Stay tuned for more on this David v. Goliath saga.
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Tags: federal district court, judge, lawsuit, Leonard Davis, Microsoft, Texas, Word
August 18th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
The law favors patent trolls right now….
Patents are granted on vague descriptions of technology that can be broadly interpreted by an ignorant judicial system, assisted by laws that allow “venue shopping” and other factors that favor the trolls.
Instead of serving the purpose for which it was originally intended, protecting an INDIVIDUAL’s claim to a specific invention or process, the US Patent system (and liberal courts) have become a weapon that tech companies use in a war against each other to see who can “own the internet” first.
If you look back at intellectual property lawsuits around inventions such as “Pong” or intermittent windshield wipers, the infringing companies CLEARLY STOLE the intellectual property, and it took tremendous effort to PROVE it. Now, it seems anyone who mentions “computer” in a patent is automatically granted intellectual property protection, regardless of prior art, common use, or any other litmus test. If Robert Kearns had only known this, he could have named his invention “COMPUTERIZED intermittent wipers, now with XML!”. Ford would NEVER HAVE STOOD A CHANCE.
Considering that even the informal use of XML predates the 1998 i4i patent, it seems to me that a METHOD for reading and writing XML would be “prior art”, considering that all methods are relatively similar, but that’s just me…….. It seems to me that only a PROPRIETARY method would qualify for a patent, and this PROPRIETARY method would have to be attractive to the market, meaning a PROPRIETARY and SLOW method would not be something of interest to Microsoft (except perhaps to be included in Vista). If Microsoft is truly using someone else’s PROPRIETARY method, enjoying competitive advantage, then discovering that would require reverse-engineering or decompiling code, both of which are in violation of Microsoft’s license agreements. So HOW EXACTLY was this discovered?