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US Court Tells Microsoft To Stop Selling Word
oranghutan writes "A judge in a Texas court has given Microsoft 60 days to comply with an order to stop selling Word products in their existing state as the result of a patent infringement suit filed by i4i. According to the injunction, Microsoft is forbidden from selling Word products that let people create XML documents, which both the 2003 and 2007 versions let you do. Michael Cherry, an analyst quoted in the article, said, 'It's going to take a long time for this kind of thing to get sorted out.' Few believe the injunction will actually stop Word from being sold because there are ways of working around it. In early 2009, a jury in the Texas court ordered Microsoft to pay i4i $200 million for infringing on the patent. ZDNet has a look at the patent itself, saying it 'sounds a bit generic.'"
A statement that could be applied to more or less all software patents I've seen so far.....
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
I seem to remember that this is where patent trolls are born. Wonder what they did to make this judge unhappy.
Microsoft's many things, but they're never a patent troll, so I'm not sure what you mean there beyond simple schadenfreude.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, they'll probably have Office Texas 2009, which is like Office 2007, except that it has the XML stuff cut out, and a new language code added: en_TX
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Even if you're not a Microsoft fan, you have to admit this is pretty frapped up.
According to the ZDNet article, Microsoft owns a patent on XML in word processor documents, but i4i owns the patent for "anything that touches custom XML formatting" in said documents.
The way i4i's patent sounds, this would also affect other things like OpenOffice.org and anything else that uses XML formatted documents. That's like, the entire current generation of word processors, isn't it?
I'm starting to wonder if patent lawyers can pick and choose who grants their patents from the Patent Office (they pick the non-tech literate ones) like they do with the courts when they sue over patent infringement (e.g. most patent cases are from east Texas).
-JJS
Remember, Microsoft pushed 'Custom XML' as a key distinguishing feature of OOXML during the fight to get it approved in ISO. 'Custom XML' was the reason (according to them) why ODF was not sufficient, feature-wise. IANAL, but if Microsoft cannot implement "Custom XML" without licensing this patent from i4i for a quarter of a billion dollars, then doesn't this likely mean that no one else is free to use "custom XML" either? Ergo, OOXML is not an open standard.
OpenOffice uses XML files by default, the format is openly-documented so anyone can use it, but it's XML. So, assuming i2i's patent is held up, how long before the OpenOffice injunction starts?
Microsoft can simply release a patch that forces Word back to the old proprietary DOC format they've been using variants of since Word 1.0. OpenOffice would have to make up a new document format, if i2i decided to continue their pursuit.
And if there's one thing we've learned about scum-sucking patent trollers, it's that they'll root and root for every penny they can, and don't really care about the damage they do.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Yeah, they just use FUD and the threat of patents to try to scare people away from using Linux.
I think he was talking about Microsoft's embrace of software patents http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2007/03/analysis-microsofts-software-patent-flip-flop.ars
Microsoft has been pro-software-patent since the mid 1990s...
The circle of life:
According to This Patent, they invented having the XML hold the word processing info... It's just too bad that they didn't invent a way to write the xml file itself.
So, in the current US situation, no one can create an xml word processing document, as you can't write the xml, but even if you could, you aren't allowed to store the font and page number in the file.
This is beyond ridiculous
Lately it seems that the big companies are getting affected by patent trolls more than the little guys (they have more money). And the big corps have enough political clout to push through patent reform laws. So if they are getting hammered like this, why aren't they lobbying for patent reform? Are they just not getting hit hard enough?
So when does the O'Reilly "Learning XML Patents" book hit the shelves and what animal will grace the cover?
Bill Gate's quote on the subject:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then they have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. "
taken from the 1991 memo at http://www.std.com/obi/Bill.Gates/Challenges.and.Strategy
Gates knows software patents are bad for the industry, but Microsoft still lobbys for software patent laws in many countries. They will win in the EU soon...
I'm sorry, but I'm afraid your trolling simply doesn't measure up to the high standards we have here at Slashdot. You see, unlike at digg or fark, we here at Slashdot have a rich tradition of truly great trolling, and because of this we try to attract only the best and brightest of the trolling community. Our trolls have gone on to lead very rich and lucrative careers in exciting and rewarding fields such as shills for Microsoft and Comcast management. Who do you think came up with the "Word incompatibilities" and "Weird Excel Math" bugs? That's right, a former Slashdot troll!
So please, in the future put more care and thought into your trolling. Remember that you are walking the path blazed by such luminaries as the GNAA and that you stand beside such greats as the shit eater troll and the ASCII goatse guy. So in the future try to remember the greats that came before you along with your trolling peers and live up to their high standards. Maybe if you troll hard you too will join the greats and have your portrait in the trolling hall of fame!(Currently located in the mens room of the Hooters restaurant in Paramus,NJ) Thank you for your time and may you have a successful career trolling here at slashdot!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
At first I thought this was BS... the way they're describing this patent (in the articles about it) makes it sound like i4i's patent basically applies to any markup language (XML, SGML, HTML, etc). It does not. What they have a patent on is using a map to locate the tags, so that tags don't interfere with document content. If MS is doing this, it isn't part of standard XML, AFAIK.
Let me say it again: This patent isn't about XML, SGML, CSS, etc. It's pretty specific, and, if Microsoft is actually violating it, it's because of what they're doing differently, not because they're using XML.
All that said, IANAL, so there may well be something important I missed.
No, but that hardly counts because it was TomTom that was the one trolling there, and Microsoft reacted defensively. That was well documented in every Slashdot discussion related to it, but it seems to have been totally forgotten (or deliberately overlooked) by many people in subsequent discussions, with Microsoft coming out as looking like the attacking party.
Anyone else stop reading after they saw "a judge in a Texas court"? I'm not a Microsoft fan, but this is getting ridiculous.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
For those that are all happy and "Yay, MSFT got screwed!" I would suggest looking at this picture explaining the patent in question and seriously think about it. From the looks of it this patent is so vague pretty much ANYTHING that uses the XML format to manipulate data in any way would could possibly be looking at a lawsuit, should this patent troll decide they are a potential cash cow. This includes OO.o. How many FLOSS applications use XML in some way? Because they have all just been put at risk until this patent is either invalidated or their ability to use XML is removed.
If this is held up then XML looks to be a dead format, and least here in the USA. The patent is just too vague to make it worth the risk, and this includes OO.o ODF which IIRC uses XML as well. If this isn't proof that software patents need to be thrown in a fire I don't know what is. If this stands it doesn't matter how many patents one has, or how much work one puts into making a new format, as all it will take is a patent troll playing "buzzword bingo" and getting a broad enough patent to kill any format dead.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Just to clarify, becasue the lede is quite misleading: this is not a "Texas court". State courts (e.g., the courts of Texas) do not handle patent infringement disputes or remedies. This is a Federal court located in Texas. The scope of the injunction is therefore nationwide. The fact that it's in Texas is a red herring -- its only significance is that this particular Federal Court (EDTx) has a history of being extremely friendly to patent holders.
new language code added: en_TX
Finally spellcheck will quit flagging "Y'all"
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
There's no money being made there, is there? :)
Parody software is protected speech
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm sorry, that 1991 memo was 17 years old in 2008, and is no longer valid.
The patent is pretty vague. Lotus Notes/Domino has separated data from document (form) for years back into the early nineties. In other words, you could change the form or the view representing the data without affecting the underlying data itself.
From the patent abstract:
"A system and method for seperate manipulation of the archicture and content of a document particularly for data representation and transformations. The systems for use by the computer software developers removes the dependency on the document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced an provided and stored seperately from the document. The map indicates the locatino and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content storage efficieny of multiple versions and efficiency of operation."
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