Microsoft Files "Emergency Motion" To Ship Word

adeelarshad82 writes "Several days after a judge ordered Microsoft to halt sales of Word and handed down $290M in fines, the software giant has moved to stop the ban. On Friday Microsoft filed an emergency motion to stop the judgment and waive the bond requirement, according to court filings. The actual document was filed under seal, so the full contents of the request have not yet been made public."

Comments

For the love of money

[ls671]

While reading, I kept hearing the song "For the love of money" from the '70s in my head. The one from the O'Jays that goes "money,money,money,money, mooo...neeey" ;-)

Well; "waive the bond requirement, according to court filings. The actual document was filed under seal, so the full contents of the request have not yet been made public."

It sure helps having money to settle court cases in your favor, doesn't it ?

Re:For the love of money

[david_thornley]

Huh?

What I read is that Microsoft submitted an emergency motion. That is presumably their option. I'd hate to have anybody deprived of their due process rights.

I haven't RTFA, of course, but the summary says nothing about what the judge did or will decide. It is very likely that the judge will rule in the correct manner according to the law.

So let's not get too enthusiastic about blaming the judge or implying corruption.

Re:For the love of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, all the court documents were in Microsoft Word format. In a strange causation cycle, the court has caused itself to stop working as the documents have suddenly become inaccessible, due to its own ruling. The judge and prosecuting attorney were last seen in the courtroom-turned-blackjack table with hookers and cocaine.

I figure that

[Winckle]

the sealed bond is just the publicly available document and the rest is just stuffed with $100 bills.

Re:I figure that

[DrLang21]

and cocaine

Re:I figure that

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, because if there is one thing I have learned from Slashdot in the past few months, it is that any judgment that I disagree with must automatically have come about because the judge is corrupt and has been showered with money by evildoers.

It is, of course, impossible that the law could favour my enemies. I mean that is just ridiculous. I'm right and therefore I should win every time. Hell, it works that way in comic books.

Re:I figure that

[Anonymous Coward]

And I thought that the "emergency motion" was when Old Bill shook his ass for Jerry Seinfeld.

Re:I figure that

[MightyMartian]

I'm sure it's a detailed synopsis as to how the US patent system is utterly broken, how it allows the most obvious ideas, and even ideas with a long history of prior art, to be patented. It probably goes into great detail as to how this is severely damaging both the US and global software industries, and how it burdens large companies with having to maintain vast portfolios to defend against just such attacks, and raises prices and creates uncertainty due to licensing costs.

Of course, it's sealed, because while Microsoft doesn't want to be the victim of this moronic and corrupt system, it also doesn't want to preclude being a potential beneficiary either.

Re:I figure that

[InsertWittyNameHere]

From the filing:

"Okay, maybe my we did steal XML, but so what? Computer software is built on plagiarism! If it weren't for someone plagiarizing Xerox, we wouldn't have Windows 3.1! If someone hadn't ripped off Apple, there'd be no Vista! iPod, Zune, XBOX? Google, Bing, MSN Live. Your honor, if you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from?"

Re:I figure that

[Gerzel]

Oh no. Very few judges are bribed or corrupt these days. Politicians go so much cheaper and are more effective.

Re:I figure that

[MightyMartian]

What's with the moderators? I guess there are a lot of patent trolls with mod points.

Re:I figure that

[RiotingPacifist]

Occam's razor suggests

there is a trolls with mod points.

[1]
[2]

Re:I figure that

[RiotingPacifist]

s/trolls/troll/

Re:I figure that

[SBrach]

    runat="server" TargetControlID="MyPanel">
    <Animations>
        <OnClick>
            <FadeOut Duration=".5" Fps="20" />
        </OnClick>
    </Animations>
</ajaxToolkit:AnimationExtender>
<!-- To Roger Myers, keep drawing, your moxie more than makes up for your
lack of talent. Your pal, Chester J. Lampwick, September 3, 1919 -->

Re:I figure that

[maharb]

Duh! We have an established bribery system (campaign contributions) that ensures all contributors get their share of the winnings.

Re:I figure that

[Macrat]

and photos of the judge having sex with a "Ticke me Elmo" doll.

Re:I figure that

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to ruin that brand new meme!

Re:I figure that

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, because if there is one thing I have learned from Slashdot in the past few months, it is that any judgment that I disagree with must automatically have come about because the judge is corrupt and has been showered with money by evildoers.

It is, of course, impossible that the law could favour my enemies. I mean that is just ridiculous. I'm right and therefore I should win every time. Hell, it works that way in comic books.

You're surprisingly articulate today, Steve.

New medication or heavier chairs?

Re:I figure that

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true unfortunately. Buy a few key politicians and all judges have to follow. It doesn't really help that judges are mostly incompetent retards that are stuck in the 60s and have no idea what they are ruling over.

Re:I figure that

[jandersen]

Oh no. Very few judges are bribed or corrupt these days. Politicians go so much cheaper and are more effective.

This is popular point of view, but not entirely accurate. Corruption is so much more than taking money under the table; in a political system where the views of all participants are polarized in the extreme, as is the case in America, politicians, judges and everybody ese in a position of power will tend to abandon the common good in favour of those that share their own view. Isn't that a form of corruption? I think it is.

Believe it or not, but in many places, such as Northern Europe, it is not uncommon that politicians in government choose not to favour only "their own kind"; they know that when you rule a country, you have to rule for all, and not ignore the large section of the population that didn't vote for you.

I am not sure why America has developed the way it has - there are too many things I don't know about your history, but I think a pretty good guess is that it has a lot to do with the almost complete lack of restrictions on moneymakers and religious charlatans.

Re:I figure that

[etu]

this is severely damaging both the US and global software industries

No, US software patents damage only US software industries.

Re:I figure that

[justinlee37]

Right, because Britain and the rest of Europe is totally free of moneymakers and religious charlatans. There definitely wasn't an epidemic of both during the middle ages and the renaissance, that's for sure.

Re:I figure that

[Nathrael]

Well, to be fair, Religion isn't a big problem here in Europe (it is a problem, but it's negligible for now). Instead, we've got a lot of socialists, communists and (other) (ultra-)authoritarians which are just as problematic, especially considering that many nations either have no libertarians, moderate conservatives or other pro-market/personal freedom parties or have them but nobody's voting for them.

Re:I figure that

[jandersen]

Yes, of course, that is exactly what I'm saying.

If you want to be taken serious and not mistaken for a complete wanker, you should try to read the actual words of what other people post here. I know it is harsh demand to make, but that's what it's come to in this God-forsaken world.

Re:I figure that

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians pick many of the judges.

Re:I figure that

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of Apple's features were taken straight from Longhorn long before Vista was released. Apple had the benefit of being the first to market after Microsoft announced numerous features that suddenly appeared in OS X. I never bought Vista, but I run Windows 7 on my desktop with my MacBook used for most trivial things (which means I use it more).

The Zune is a copy of the iPod, but so is every other music player out there worth buying. The interface is actually a bit different and workable. Honestly, my big complaint about the Zune is it feels like a cheap plastic (I have a third gen iPod nano, a first gen iPod touch and an iPhone 3G S).

The Xbox is also a great device (minus the red ring of death, which was clearly something wrong on the hardware end with overheating). After all, Sony's PlayStation was originally developed with Nintendo, who didn't think it was worth it.

Microsoft had MSN before Google existed. It just wasn't as good. Google vastly improved search, but they did not invent it. I guess they should be declared king and no one else should compete; that will be good for the consumer.

seems reasonable

[Trepidity]

Even if this is unquestionably a patent violation, the Supreme Court has already held, in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. (2006), that an injunction prohibiting sale of the infringing product is not necessarily the appropriate remedy in all cases. Rather, the traditional four factors for issuing an injunction must be balanced: 1) that the injury is irreparable; 2) that there are inadequate alternate remedies to compensate for the injury; 3) that the balance of hardships favors the plaintiff; and 4) that an injunction does not harm the public interest. Microsoft has an least a plausible argument that they are not satisfied in this case, and that alternate remedies (perhaps money damages) would be better than an injunction against sale, even if indeed Word is infringing.

Re:seems reasonable

[TemporalBeing]

From what little I've read on this, it seems that Microsoft basically incorporated the plaintiff's product into Word. So essentially it would put the plaintiff out of business, and could result in irreparable damages to the plaintiff. So it is likely to withstand that test...IANAL, but from what little I know it seems reasonable.

Also, it's about time this happened, given how many times Microsoft has done this to others.

Re:seems reasonable

[Desler]

Who's to say that anyone en masse would have bought their software even if Microsoft hadn't done this?

Re:seems reasonable

[AnotherBlackHat]

Even if this is unquestionably a patent violation, the Supreme Court has already held, in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. (2006), that an injunction prohibiting sale of the infringing product is not necessarily the appropriate remedy in all cases. Rather, the traditional four factors for issuing an injunction must be balanced: 1) that the injury is irreparable; 2) that there are inadequate alternate remedies to compensate for the injury; 3) that the balance of hardships favors the plaintiff; and 4) that an injunction does not harm the public interest. Microsoft has an least a plausible argument that they are not satisfied in this case, and that alternate remedies (perhaps money damages) would be better than an injunction against sale, even if indeed Word is infringing.

If Microsoft can't post a $290 million bond without suffering irreparable harm, then what chance to they have to pay even larger money damages for future infringement?

Re:seems reasonable

[gravesb]

The injury is to the plaintiff, not Microsoft. MS is probably arguing that any harm to the plaintiff is not irreparable, and that later monetary damages will cure any harm.

Re:seems reasonable

[MightyMartian]

It's a fucking XML-encapsulated document structure. The entire point of SGML and SGML derivatives like XML is to encapsulate data into documents and other file structures. If this use of markups can be patented, then I'm heading down to the patent office to patent CSS.

Re:seems reasonable

[AmyRose1024]

Too late. Microsoft beat you to it. http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Disclosures

Re:seems reasonable

[Dahamma]

Though it's pretty clear it was a defensive patent to HELP promote the CSS standard (and prevent bullshit like this patent on embedding XML data in a document):

any W3C member or other party will be able to obtain a license under Microsoft's US Patent No. 5,860,073 to implement and use the technology described in W3C Recommendations for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the EXtensible Style Language (XSL) for the purpose of supporting such standards, on a royalty-free basis. One condition of this license shall be the party's agreement to not assert patent rights against Microsoft and other companies for their implementation of those standards

Re:seems reasonable

[Helldesk Hound]

In this case there is negligible impact against Microsoft as a result of the injunction, as MS Office already has proprietary file formats owned by Microsoft that can be used.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

according to TFA there was indeed a fair amount of demand for i4i's product, which suddenly dried up once this feature was incorporated into Word.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

I4i had 200 employees and was a growing, thriving business when MS came calling after 9/ll to learn how to do what I4i was doing. That's right. MS visited I4i to learn just how to do what I4i was doing. That's just how obvious and non-novel I4i's patent was at the time. It also proves MS knew the technology was covered by a patent.

MS blatently ripped off I4i and now they are crying because they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They stole both I4i's technology and customer base. How? After incorporating I4i's technology into their own products they began to aggressively attack I4i's customer base. At the time I4i had 200 employees. Now they are approximately 1/7th of the size they were.

I'd say that it's pretty clear that I4i has been irreparably harmed by MS's unethical actions.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anpheus]

Have you read the patent?

It seems like it would cover Adobe Dreamweaver, or any GUI editor that edits an XML-based data and styling application, where the data and the metacode defining the styles are separately stored but selected through some procedure.

For example, Notepad++, an open source notepad implementation, stores style information in a document separate from the storage of the text, which always remains plaintext and without any markup except that which is defined in a separate metadata file. In fact, Notepad++ goes a bit further and defines the method of mapping external to the document itself, allowing entirely plaintext documents, batch files, and dozens of programming languages to be syntax highlighted. That's just one example, and I believe Notepad++ is based off a root engine, Scintilla?

Regardless, I feel like I can continue to think of applications that violate the patent all day. The only reason I4i went after Microsoft in an East Texas courtroom is because they knew they could get either a lot of money, or a lot of publicity, or absurdly, they actually think they deserve the sole right to implement separately stored metadata + data in XML formats.

Re:seems reasonable

[AnotherBlackHat]

The injury is to the plaintiff, not Microsoft. MS is probably arguing that any harm to the plaintiff is not irreparable, and that later monetary damages will cure any harm.

So they're going to argue that they'll not only pay the 290 million, but also pay the later monetary damages, and therefore shouldn't have to actually put the 290 million they owe aside?
Somehow, I doubt that will be their argument.

Re:seems reasonable

[Runaway1956]

4) that an injunction does not harm the public interest

One does NOT NEED to be an opensource fanboi to make a decent argument that it would be in the public interest to strip MS of Office completely. There is a long list of word processors that have been exterminated, thanks to MS. Without a megalopoly pushing their version of an office suite, not only would Open Office have a shot at taking the lead, but some of the older competition MIGHT have a chance of making a comeback. Not to mention, a new startup or six might get into the market.

Just think what COULD happen with a half dozen competitors in the field. Standards, maybe? Plummeting prices?

No, you don't need to be an open source fanboi, or even a MS basher to see that it could be good for all of us if MS got out of the office arena.

Re:seems reasonable

[LingNoi]

From what little I've read on this, it seems that Microsoft basically incorporated the plaintiff's product into Word. So essentially it would put the plaintiff out of business, and could result in irreparable damages to the plaintiff.

Yeah but this is exactly like the iPhone copy & paste app now being cut out the loop. If you're going to try and make it illegal for Microsoft to add features to its products simply because someone else is selling it then things will get ridiculous fast.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the AC you're replying to.

What does any of that have to do with the facts of the case?

MS didn't understand the technology. They went to I4i to understand it. I4i cooperated because MS came in concert with US intelligence and US intelligence was wanting to understand how they could search documents quickly after 9/11. That makes the technology, at that time, both non-obvious and novel to MS, the US government, and most likely the rest of the commercial software world, as they hadn't been able to find anyone who did what I4i was capable of doing. Just because, years later, you think you understand the patent and claim you can think of may applications that violate the patent doesn't invalidate the patent. It had to be innovative/novel/non-obvious then, not now.

Here's a link to give more background.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-biblical-vengeance-of-i4i/article1253054/

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohh my, this patent refers to another from 1998, which seems to patent horizontal scrolling of fields: #6,209,009. The whole system is really f...ked, I am moving to Mars to start over.

Re:seems reasonable

[mysidia]

The public's interest is not exclusive to developers of competing word processors (which are a small portion of the 'public').

The very large portion of the public that require Microsoft Office software in the course of their business have it in their best interest that they can obtain Word.

Re:seems reasonable

[Meski]

Um, given the number of addins available for Word, that would mean Microsoft couldn't 'improve' their product by adding features. Some would say that's a good thing, given the feature bloat its got. But addin conflicts in Office are a headache to deal with.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

In the large, the need in question can be fully filled by a single Open Sourced software package, which is capable of large pieces of complete compatibility with Word in most of the used versions. In fact, it's been used to salvage many a file that Word shat itself over and couldn't open again.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

did they patented iphone copy and paste? no. is this relevant? no.

Re:seems reasonable

[Runaway1956]

public interest != convenience

As things stand, at this moment in time, MS Office is a convenience, because it does everything that people have been conditioned to expect of an office suite. As AC says, there are alternatives. And, removing the monopoly will motivate others to come up with solutions to the problems that MS created.

Real public interest ~= innovation

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

"One condition of this license shall be the party's agreement to not assert patent rights against Microsoft and other companies for their implementation of those standards"

Not reasonable. What if MS violates a patent when there really IS a violation of a patent? After all, that isn't necessarily part of the core requirement of an OPEN STANDARD. Therefore infringing on their patent isn't NECESSARY. Yet using MS's patent ***IS***. Unless you want to break the standard.

Release the patent. Lapse it. Give it away.

IF they want to be defended against software patents, make software patents invalid.

Re:seems reasonable

[mysidia]

This is like supporting the government ordering the power company to turn off your city's power grid, or cease and decist turning up any new customers, as a punitive action against the electric company. On the basis that alternatives are available, such as installing solar panels, or companies and citizens buying diesel generators to power their businesses and homes.

The alternatives cannot be had for most enterprises, except at extreme cost (such as re-training employees, revamping business systems, and finding some way of converting the word documents to a suitable format for a new word processor).

In addition VBA Script and macros are commonly used on Office documents, and expensive programming may need to be done for users to migrate document automations to another platform.

Re:seems reasonable

[TemporalBeing]

i4i uses a very unique approach to the method, and from what you describe it sounds like you've only read the summary. I strongly suggest you read Rob Weir's article (available on Groklaw as well as other sources) and go back and read the patent, particularly the claims section.

There has already been a fair amount of discussion and not everything that uses XML and meta-data violates the patent. For example, ODF uses a very different method than this patent for the same kind of task - and from the various commentaries they do not violate it; namely b/c they saw the method proposed by i4i and MS as the wrong way to do it.

They went after MS exactly b/c MS did their normal predatory behavior and they have a legitimate case against MS.

FYI - this doesn't mean that I support software patents (I don't!); but this case is exactly why MS was charged with using its monopoly in an illegal way, and really shows what they do. So it's nice to see them bitten by it like this.

Re:seems reasonable

[Runaway1956]

"like supporting the government ordering the power company to"

At least we seem to agree that the government has authority over a government subsidized monopoly. ;-)

Re:seems reasonable

[ClosedSource]

They can't sell Office as a result of the injunction. I wouldn't call that a "negligible" impact.

Re:seems reasonable

[ClosedSource]

Yes, I know you believe that you understand what our "little Luser brothers" really need, but the courts are unlikely to apply your personal views in deciding this issue.

Re:seems reasonable

[MikeBabcock]

Intelligently encapsulating information is not as easy as you make it sound. That's like saying that how to move a piano is obvious. You should still use a professional mover, even if you think you know how to do it.

Lots of things seem obvious until you get down to doing it and realize the experts have actually worked out something really intelligent that only seems obvious after having seen how they do it.

Re:seems reasonable

[Runaway1956]

And you seem to be looking at only a small part of the picture. Linux Users would almost certainly benefit if MS were out of the office suite business. But, as you point out, that IS only a small part of the picture.

Try expanding your mind, and look at EVERYONE.

With MS out of the way, not only does open source have a level playing field, but so do any number of proprietary office suite developers. Case in point: the people who brought this suit, in TFA.

Still, you would have a good point if you said that developers in general are only a small part of the picture. So, looking at the really BIG picture - if everyone in the world were to adopt Open Office as "the standard", and everyone in the world were to adopt OOo within the next 12 months, what would be the total expenditure for software?

It would be something close to $0.00.

SUPPORT might be costly for enterprise - but they are already spending millions for support of MS Office products.

That "TCO" figure that MS likes to throw around is totally bogus. Training is a one time thing. Suppose you spend a couple hundred bucks per employee to teach them how to use OOo. One time expense, as opposed to spending a couple hundred bucks EVERY TIME MS decides to "upgrade" their software, plus the support costs.

Don't like open source, just on general principle? Fine. Buy your proprietary software and support from the people who actually develop it - not from MS who just rips whatever they want from the little people. It will be cheaper in the long run, I'm certain.

As an aside - I get a kick out of MS running all those commercials on television. They HAVE the monopoly already, but they obviously feel so threatened they need to convince us that they are the best. Of course, "best" is a matter of opinion, and many educated opinions say they are NOT the best. :^)

Re:seems reasonable

[MightyMartian]

Nothing I've seen from this patent is not contained in HTML-CSS, which involves a document with encapsulated formatting data in the form of CSS. But metadata has been part of markup since at least Troff, which is what, the early 1970s? PostScript also could do similar things. There is nothing particular novel about encapsulating special additional data or even instructions in a markup language. This is a bogus patent, and it's only because judges are ignorant and the patent office is overburdened that any of this kind of crap gets through.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

At the time, the entire technology had already been implemented at a much lower level in the .NET Framework; their programming model already understood it at this point.

That background article was written with their complete bias. From that article, the premise of their technology was wrapping a date in XML date tags. Wow. Tremendous benefit to the tech world there! It's almost like wrapping the document's title in a title tag? Oh, it's exactly like that.

There is absolutely nothing innovative with it because it was entirely obvious then too. After all, XML is based off of SGML, which has many *ML formats that predate their patent.

By your estimate, I should go and patent associating structures from a .NET language with binary equivalents in a file. Sure, it has been for years in other languages that they derive from, is completely obvious, but what the hey.

Just because it's not obvious to the pathetically inept PTO, does not mean it's not obvious to the rest of the world (you excluded).

Re:seems reasonable

[tarius8105]

So what you're saying is that from the article they're justification is that word doesnt know how to recognize a date? I've seen it recognize dates going back to word 97.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Same person, but I needed to add one more thing.

I hope no one is naive enough to believe Microsoft, or any other company, could not figure out how to parse an XML file without the assistance of i4i. Their description in the article is hopefully a vague simplification because any second year programming student should be able to write a very basic file parser with no brain at all that can parse add arbitrary tags with a preset meaning (Schema).

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice currently has no chance at beating Microsoft Office. The level of quality in OpenOffice is far and below any retail product that I have used in the past two or three years.

Argue for WordPerfect, but to suggest OpenOffice is more than a nice, free alternative to both of those is a joke.

There is absolutely nothing stopping people from making a version of Office (look at Apple) that is both compatible and competitive; Google is also trying after all. The reason people don't regularly switch is because Office does so much (especially Outlook). I agree competition would be good, especially from a UI perspective, which needs work. Using Ribbons is not completely intuitive, but I do see them as better than the old system, which I was simply used too.

I assume there is something else out there better. Simpler. Funny thing is that I imagine Microsoft Research is looking for it, yet your disgust with MS would rather they just stop and have someone else rewrite the wheel.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'M the original AC that Anpheus was replying to and I completely agree with him now. I was so wrong, so very wrong. I have seen the light now. Thanks Anpheus!

Re:seems reasonable

[sjames]

Have you read the patent?

It seems like it would cover Adobe Dreamweaver, or any GUI editor that edits an XML-based data and styling application, where the data and the metacode defining the styles are separately stored but selected through some procedure.

For example, Notepad++, an open source notepad implementation, stores style information in a document separate from the storage of the text, which always remains plaintext and without any markup except that which is defined in a separate metadata file. In fact, Notepad++ goes a bit further and defines the method of mapping external to the document itself, allowing entirely plaintext documents, batch files, and dozens of programming languages to be syntax highlighted. That's just one example, and I believe Notepad++ is based off a root engine, Scintilla?

So it does not, in fact use some method to alter or hint the display of specifically an XML document? Not covered then. Not even with the crazy patent system.

Re:seems reasonable

[mysidia]

Well, yes. But (government) courts have authority over all companies and organizations whether monopoly or not.

Within certain bounds, when a finding has been made in favor of the plaintiff, and the liable party fails to perform, all sorts of sanctions can be ordered, including requiring them to stop operating, or face a finding of contempt.

Now if they really wanted to get Microsoft's attention, the court would deliver orders to all the major institutions to freeze Microsoft assets until they paid the judgement.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I definitely think Microsoft deserves the government fines that have been levied on it, but to be beaten by a patent troll?

Re:seems reasonable

[omfgnosis]

Sure they can sell Office. They simply can't sell it with docx support.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amusing that anyone thinks this will have any impact on Microsoft beyond a minor, short-term inconvenience. They are a convicted monopolist on multiple continents and it has had exactly zero impact on their business model, market share, or predatory practices. It will only mean another disbursement from their generous legal fine and bribery fund which, incidentally, is largely filled by sales of Word and other Office products.

Re:seems reasonable

[MikeBabcock]

You don't sound like you've actually read the patent at all. The patent is on the encapsulation at all, its on the metadata system to make the information more easily searchable.

My best summary would be they've patented an efficient indexing system for XML documents.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anpheus]

On the contrary, it does hint XML documents. It also does HTML, and it can do a variety of languages.

So in the case of hinting an XML document, it has XML data, with XML styling and XML definitions of how to lay out styles.

Re:seems reasonable

[sjames]

Specifically XML as in if it's not XML it's lost? That's contrary to your description.

In order to violate the patent, it has to use the patented technique, not just achieve a similar result or even use a similar technique. Since unlike the subject of the patent, it can handle even plaintext, I'm guessing it must use a different technique.

Re:seems reasonable

[Anpheus]

Honestly, why are we having this discussion at all?

Like me, I'm guessing you hate software patents. They make your job annoying, they make my job annoying. They tend to produce no net worth, yet create huge risks and liabilities for young companies and startups. Software patents have become such a joke that companies like IBM and Microsoft submit several, perhaps dozens of patents a day to make sure every possible process is covered. Why? So that when push comes to shove, they can show the other team's lawyers their patent warchest and cross license.

Even if it's a unique "technique," this is something obvious to the craft.

It's amazing what flies come out of the woodwork when Microsoft gets sued. No, sorry, I meant stupid. It's stupid what I'm seeing on Slashdot. Everyone who hates software patents and has any grasp of current technology would realize i4i just another company building a patent warchest, and somehow it crossed their mind to sue Microsoft.

Re:seems reasonable

[sjames]

In part it's an academic exercise. In part its a sincere wish/hope that the advocates of strong IP laws suffer for them at least as much as everyone else does.

The latter is especially true for MS, a company with a significant history of lifting the intellectual work of others while insisting that nobody be allowed to return the favor. Basic fairness demands that they be forced to live up (or down) to the same standards they insist on for others.

I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[jmorris42]

I hate to be on Microsoft's side but they are right on this one. Maybe if they fight off enough patent trolls they will join in efforts to reform patents out of self preservation.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct to be on Microsoft's side. I know it won't go over well on Slashdot, but the facts are the facts.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Cyberax]

Nope. MS got what it deserved.

They did not question patent's validity in fear that it might undermine their portfolio. So let them suffer.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[DragonWriter]

They did not question patent's validity in fear that it might undermine their portfolio.

They argued both that the patent was invalid and that they didn't infringe on it, in any case. They lost on both points, but they certainly made the argument.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[MrMista_B]

Except, there are no patent trolls in this case. i4i ships and sells an actual product, the patented code for which Microsoft actually stole after working with them.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Fluffeh]

I hate to be on Microsoft's side but they are right on this one. Maybe if they fight off enough patent trolls they will join in efforts to reform patents out of self preservation.

The problem is that they themselves patent just about everything under the sun.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Tanman]

Except that the plaintiffs are not patent trolls and have a real and verifiable grievance.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[mdwh2]

Except, people's opposition to patents is not restricted to just the case of patent trolls (although they are one demonstration of the problem). Some people have the radical notion that perhaps an idea can't be owned by one person. And whilst there may be some argument for some kinds of patents, software patents are a particular evil, that I do not believe we should have (and in my country, the UK, we don't have them).

Microsoft have an actual product too. If they really "stole" it from them (you probably meant to say "copied"), then why not sue them for copyright infringement?

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[mdwh2]

So now that it's Microsoft, software patents are okay, just so long as the company suing are not "trolls"?

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[InlawBiker]

The system is so broken that they'd be sued by every small-time squatter who had the gumption to slip an idea through the patent office. It's cheaper to just register everything you can think of and then out-lawyer your competition. Microsoft ain't the only ones doing it either.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[MightyMartian]

And what's that exactly? That they store documents in a single XML file? That's kinda the point of XML, and indeed of most of the SGML derivatives. The concept has been around for decades. What they have is a product based off of a rather old idea, and then Microsoft implemented that rather old idea itself, thus rendering their product worthless. That's not an argument for them getting some sort of monetary reparations, it's an argument for companies not basing their revenue stream on decades-old concepts that probably are older than most of their software engineers.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Shados]

Defensive patents...

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[walshy007]

Some people have the radical notion that perhaps an idea can't be owned by one person.

The patent system was not made for people to own ideas, it was made for people to own IMPLEMENTATIONS of ideas, this is where patents tend to fall flat on their ass with software. With every man and his dog patenting 'the ability to do x'.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[calc]

No, its okay because Microsoft uses patents as weapons and not just defensively, and so they are now getting what they deserve. See the TomTom case for example.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[shentino]

I'd compare MS's pilfering of i4i's product (which should never have been patented in the first place) to a pirate's pilfering of RIAA soundtracks (which enjoy far too draconian protection under copyright law).

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

i4i created and sold a product that M$ stole. That product is indeed an IMPLEMENTATION, this is where your comment falls flat in its ass.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Trogre]

What did they steal, exactly?

I'm pretty sure you're using the wrong word there. i4i weren't actually deprived of anything were they? And if you say "profit" or "a secret", then I'm going to conclude that you must also support calling copyright infringement "theft".

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the plaintiffs are not patent trolls and have a real and verifiable grievance.

What is a patent troll?

I only ask you because you seem to not be using it as English does, yet it appears to be two English words put together.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company that enforces its patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to manufacture or market the patented invention.

Alleged infringers. We have none of those here. The court ruled Microsoft infringes. No more alleged.

unduly aggressive. None of that here. Hell, almost by definition it is not possible to be very aggressive towards a company the size of Microsoft. But that aside, what exactly is aggressive here? Due process is not aggressive.

Often with no intention. Not that this is even required at all, but none of that here. Not only do they have intention to manufacture their invention, they are actually doing it!

So yea, your version does not mean what the rest of us know it as. What does patent troll mean to you again?

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Expanding on parent, sort of a mutual assured destruction. Sue me for an infringement of a patent, I can find one on you.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom Tom should not have threatened Microsoft first they approached Microsoft looking for a payoff then got burned instead of the payoff they where looking for. "TomTom is seeking in its current lawsuit "triple damages for willful infringement" on Microsoft's part because Microsoft had been notified of TomTom's claims and had not come forward with acceptable licensing terms."

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[walshy007]

i4i created and sold a product that M$ stole.

If they did that, i4i would have sued them for copyright infringement, not over patents. They did not 'steal' the product, they made their own product from scratch that did something similar

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[gnupun]

If they did that, i4i would have sued them for copyright infringement, not over patents.

Are you totally clueless? Copyright only protects direct cut-n-paste ripoffs of source code, which only stupid, mediocre programmers resort to. There are hundreds of ways to implement an idea. Sometimes, the code is not that valuable -- any competent programmer can implement it. But the idea behind that code is valuable and needs to be protected by a patent.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[walshy007]

I know they didn't copy it, or steal it, I was saying that they didn't, what I wrote was that IF they DID 'steal' i4i's product, it would be a copyright infringement, not patent. Re-read the conversation if necessary.

But the idea behind that code is valuable and needs to be protected by a patent.

So what your saying is, that the first person to come up with sin/cos/tan should have patented it and not let the world use the idea? Mathematics are except from patents for a reason, they are ideas, and not implementations of ideas

You seem to think that ideas (not a novel implementation of an idea) should be protected by patents, I would hate to think what the world of science and academia would be like if your world view was true, I imagine something like the middle ages.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Meski]

i4i created and sold a product that M$ stole.

Stealing a product, which is what he was referring to, is closer to copyright infringement than patent infringement. But MS didn't steal a product, they stole the idea. Kind of funny seeing MS getting cut by that.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Svartalf]

If they argued the right way on invalidity (in re Bilski...) they would have probably won the case. But the full-court press on invalidity would have hindered their future positioning on other legal fronts forevermore.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent is trivial. They try to enforce it. They are trolls.

It doesn't matter that they ship products that use this trivial patent. Unless there is an official definition of "patent troll" that states that said company may not ship any products. In which case I hereby introduce the term "patent whore".

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at a loss as to why people seem to think Microsoft has lost and that there's nothing they can do about it. You won't see Word go out of the market, if even for the simple reason that it's Microsoft's cash-cow and if they lose that they might as well give up the company altogether. They're gonna fight for the right to sell Word if they have to hold a knife at someone's throat.

But there's plenty they can do without resorting to crass gestures. They're just going through the motions of the legal system right now. They can pull the offending parts from Word, should it come to that. But I find it much more likely they're going to unearth some patents of their own that i4i infringes, and counter-sue. After which they'll settle and i4i will go the way of the Dodo, to be remembered only as a byline in the troubled tech history.

Patents don't help anybody. Patents are weapons of mass destruction, much like nuclear bombs, and when they start going off nobody's left standing. What i4i did was the equivalent of a comparatively small and poor nation bringing a nuke near the borders of a superpower. How do you think that's likely to end?

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[unapersson]

Which they have already used to threaten open source projects. Not terribly defensive.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[gbjbaanb]

As usual TFS doesn't give enough information. Perhaps reading slashdot will free you from this troublesome burden of thinking MS is in the right:

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1339159&cid=29101019

hit the link in that post for external-to-slashdot details.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it's defensive. It defends their ... profit margins!

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[fulldecent]

>> Except, there are no patent trolls in this case. i4i ships and sells an actual product, the patented code for which Microsoft actually stole after working with them.

The code, or the algorithm?

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Theaetetus]

If they argued the right way on invalidity (in re Bilski...) they would have probably won the case. But the full-court press on invalidity would have hindered their future positioning on other legal fronts forevermore.

No, they wouldn't. You should actually go read Bilski and the i4i patent. Here's claim 1:

1. A computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content; said system comprising:
metacode map distinct storage means;
means for providing a menu of metacodes to said metacode storage means;
and means for compiling said metacodes of the menu by locating, detecting and addressing the metacodes in the document to constitute the map and storing the map in the metacode storage means; and
means for resolving the content and the metacode map into the document.

Now, three things present themselves. First, Bilski was on method patents, not system claims. The Fed Circuit has held many times that a claim on a system is statutory, even if it contains functional steps - the claim is restricted to the physical system that performs the steps, not the mere method, and is statutory.

Second, Bilski cited State Street with approval, and State Street was about a system with "means for" limitations that again, restrict the functional limitations to being performed by a physical system.

Finally, even if you ignore the above and do a straight Bilski machine-or-transformation test, this appears to be a specific machine - it's a computer system configured with functions for creating and storing a metacode map. My computer isn't configured with those functions (mainly 'cause I don't use Word), so the claims apparently require a specific computer.

Anyways, Bilski's pretty useless at the moment, essentially a lame duck decision, since cert has been granted. SCOTUS doesn't do that unless they want to weigh in - could go narrower, could go broader, but it's not going to stand as is. So, wait until the next SCOTUS term. Things will get a bit more settled, though not in the way the Slashdot anti-patent crowd will like.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Except, people's opposition to patents is not restricted
> to just the case of patent trolls

Also keep in mind that large corporations deal heavily in the patent troll's big brother: the defensive patent.

Big corporations try to patent everything they can think of, not just for the good patents, but also on things they have no intention of using directly, but rather to block other companies that do want to do that.

In this way, companies block each other, thus forcing each other to agree to a patent exchange agreement.

One company sues another over a legitimate, if zwingy, patent. The other patents a ton of stuff surrounding that or another patent important to that company, thus almost landlocking from further development, so to speak.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

I note the parent post to yours is modded "troll" even though I cannot conceive of anything trollish about it. It may or may not be wrong, but there's nothing trollish about it.

Now compare vs. the post below this one, which just contradicts that post with a "Nope!" Modded insightful and Einstein-like genius, or whatever.

You guys understand the metamod system is supposed to correct this, where wrongful downmods get slammed, restricting or unweighting the modding ability of the poor modders. Yet the metamod system is plagued by the same goofs who do the bad modding in the first place.

Hence the bad troll modder above will never get slapped on the wrist, nor will those who modded the lame "Nope!" post below insightful.

Re:I hate taking Microsoft's side...

[Anonymous Coward]

they've used defensive patents to threaten open source projects? source?

Re:It's a freakin' word processor.

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait, you're saying that Microsoft is jumping on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon by making Microsoft look bad in an attempt to curry favour with the judiciary?

Ingenious; and fruity - hubba bubba.

You reap what you sow

[Grishnakh]

It's good to see MS in a bind like this. This is all because of a patent troll, which MS themselves have been by accusing Linux of violating their patents (but without specifying which patents).

If MS had used their enormous power to work against software patents, and get them eliminated as in many other countries, then they wouldn't be having this problem with little patent trolls. But instead, they wanted to use them as a weapon against Linux, and they're getting burned.

Re:You reap what you sow

[MrMista_B]

You're wrong, and overmoderated.

There is no patent troll in this case.

i4i is an actual company, that sells actual products. They worked with Microsoft, and Microsoft, line for line, stole their code. i4i subsequently sued them, and won.

There is no patent troll in this case.

Re:You reap what you sow

[smclean]

i4i is an actual company, that sells actual products. They worked with Microsoft, and Microsoft, line for line, stole their code. i4i subsequently sued them, and won.

Hi, uninformed person here. If they stole code line for line, why is this a patent case and not a copyright infringement case?

Re:You reap what you sow

[Toveling]

A patent troll is a company that offers no products, but files lawsuits based on patents they own. A patent troll microsoft is not. Microsoft has their fair share of crappy patents, but they have never to my knowledge used patents directly against OSS. They've made threats, but anyone can make threats.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Grishnakh]

Wrong. True, a traditional patent troll is one that makes no real products. However, MS's activity against Linux can certainly be seen as "trollish", because of their vague threats meant to stir up FUD. At least the traditional patent trolls have the decency to state which patents are being violated, even if they're BS patents.

So, unless you can come up with a better term for their despicable behavior, I'll continue to use the term "troll" for MS.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Grishnakh]

citation needed. All I see here is a patent case, which has nothing to do with copyright infringement which you accuse MS of.

Besides, any company stupid enough to work with MS and not expect to be ripped off deserves to be ripped off. They should even make a special law granting MS the right to do that, since they've done it so many times in the past yet these stupid companies keep trusting MS to not do it again.

Re:You reap what you sow

[nurb432]

I would be willing to bet that the same thing will happen that happened when they lost the CP/M case. They paid the 'injured' off, continued to ship product during the entire episode ( in that case, decades ), made far more then the pay off was and it was all swept under the carpet, chalking it up to 'cost of doing business'.

Normal operating procedures for a monopoly.

Re:You reap what you sow

[russotto]

A patent troll is a company that offers no products, but files lawsuits based on patents they own.

That's a bit too narrow.

Justice Bradley stated, in 1882

It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures.

Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities to lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith.

Those "speculative schemers" are patent trolls. It doesn't matter whether they actually use each "shadow of a shade of an idea" in a product of their own; they're patent trolls even if they make their own product, as long as they try to prevent others from using those non-novel or obvious ideas.

By that definition, i4i is a patent troll, and Microsoft has, in other instances, acted as a patent troll.

Not making a product is neither necessary nor sufficient for patent-trollism. An organization which mainly does research might legitimately obtain a patent without any intent of developing it themselves. And an organization which makes a real product might engage in patent-trolling to put competitors out of business, or to obtain a revenue stream when their own product has failed.

Re:You reap what you sow

[mdwh2]

I don't disagree - but if having actual products doesn't stop one being a patent troll, you should put this point to the people here claiming that i4i can't possibly be patent trolls.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Anonymous Coward]

i4i is an actual company, that sells actual products. They worked with Microsoft, and Microsoft, line for line, stole their code. i4i subsequently sued them, and won.

Hi, uninformed person here. If they stole code line for line, why is this a patent case and not a copyright infringement case?

Obviously because they had a patent related to the software and could get better damages from it?

Re:You reap what you sow

[Grishnakh]

This is all getting pretty pedantic, but maybe we just need a whole new term for MS's behavior, since I can't think of any other instance where a company went around bad-mouthing its competitors, claiming it has patents which they infringe, but refusing to disclose what those patents may be, just to get people to stop using the competitors' products.

Or, if we wanted to use a more lax definition of "troll", we could say it's anyone attempting to use the patent system (with its lax to non-existent safeguards against abuse) to profit in ways that don't involve direct competition. A normal company using patents does so to protect products it actually makes and sells, and only moves to litigation when a competitor violates one of those patents in its own competing product, such as with someone selling a knock-off of a patented technology. Anything other than this seems like "trollish" behavior to me, amounting to abuse of the patent system. Under this definition, i4i sounds like a troll since I don't see any "i4i" word processors on the market.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Anonymous Coward]

actually if they did steal the code line-for-line it would be both a patent and copyright infringement case.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Kleen13]

"Besides, any company stupid enough to work with MS and not expect to be ripped off deserves to be ripped off." ?????? Are you back on the pipe?

Re:You reap what you sow

[10101001 10101001]

If you actually look over the patent being sued over, US Patent 5,787,449, you'll notice a major similarity to Microsoft's patent on LFNs. Specifically, US Patent 5,787,449 patents the idea of keeping document formating and content separate--ie, to have two separate streams of information instead of one. A simple idea for an implimentation, then, would be to have a plain .txt file and a separate tag+index file and a program that loads the two together, patches the .txt file in memory, and treats the result as an XML file.

In a similar vein, up until Windows 95, there were various schemes to overcome the 8.3 limitation of DOS filenames. Most used the idea of keeping a separate file (descript.ion for example) containing a short and long filename and merging them in memory with the directory listing for long filename supporting programs. Microsoft decided to do something similar, except they stored the long file names directly within the directory listing--ie, the took two separate streams of information and made them one.

What was my point? Merely that the idea of spliting or joining streams of related information is not at all a novel idea, inherently, although people may come up with more or less clever implementations to accomplish the goal. To that end, I'd be more than happy to support Microsoft in its efforts to stop i4i's patent, presuming of course that they too would stop suing companies like TomTom over similar patents they hold.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Grishnakh]

If you know a contractor that's been arrested many, many times for ripping off his clients, stealing their stuff from their homes when he's entrusted to do jobs in them, etc., has been in the news for that, and has even ripped off your next-door neighbor, would you hire that contractor to work in your home? If you did, I would call you stupid, and I actually would say that you deserved to be ripped off for your stupidity.

It's the same thing with MS. Every company that works with them is burned.

Re:You reap what you sow

[mysidia]

Unless/until Microsoft has revealed the code, i4i cannot determine that it's copied line by line, rather than reverse engineered and re-implemented under clean room conditions.

Patent claims can be more powerful. If it were just copyright, Microsoft could remove the offending code and use aforementioned reverse-engineering techniques to evade copyright claims.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Trogre]

By that definition, i4i is a patent troll
Except for that whole "without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts" part.

Re:You reap what you sow

[h4rm0ny]

I hope not. Microsoft need to actually win this and get that patent invalidated. Or else who will i4i shake down next? OpenOffice? Notepad++? It's a bad patent.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Steve001]

10101001 10101001 wrote as part of a post:

In a similar vein, up until Windows 95, there were various schemes to overcome the 8.3 limitation of DOS filenames. Most used the idea of keeping a separate file (descript.ion for example) containing a short and long filename and merging them in memory with the directory listing for long filename supporting programs. Microsoft decided to do something similar, except they stored the long file names directly within the directory listing--ie, the took two separate streams of information and made them one.

In a related note, this sounds similar to the way that Profession Write used to store its document information. It would automatically create an extra file in the directory that contained document information on all of the Professional Write documents in the directory, including the long document name.

Returning to the topic of the article, I request a clarification. I've read the original article in the original thread and I'm unsure of exactly the issue is. From that I read, it seems like the issue isn't that the document is saved in many pieces (which the OpenDocument format does). Rather, it seems like the issue is that MS Word can create custom made XML tags on its own and that is what the issue is. If that is the case, would this have an affect on the OpenDocument format? Thanks in advance for the clarification.

Re:You reap what you sow

[miffo.swe]

Im not so sure about that. If i4i is smart they will not under any circumstanses sell the patent to Microsoft. Demand a limited time license thats renegotiated periodically.

The thing is, i4i has ECMA Office Open XML by the balls. If i4i has the patent the standard is utterly useless for Microsoft. They must have it at any cost so the negotiating power lies at i4i. Not even Chuck Norris can help Microsoft on this.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Anonymous Coward]

Or else who will i4i shake down next? OpenOffice? ...

Err... wake up.

As noted in several comments, i4i themselves have stated that Openoffice/ODF are *not* affected by this patent.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no patent troll in this case.

i4i is an actual company, that sells actual products.

There is no patent troll in this case.

You keep on repeating that in this thread. Are you connected to i4i ?

Filing patents for banal and obvious software implementations IS patent trolling. Being an actual company and selling actual products doesn't change this.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you say is true and completely irrelevant.

Re:You reap what you sow

[Wirey1]

I'm confused by your post.

From what I've gathered, i4i has tech that MS didn't understand so MS asked i4i about it. Then MS turns around and implements i4i's ideas in Word. That is not an idea that occurred "naturally and spontaneously" to MS in the course of its work.

When the 800lb software gorilla has to ask the little guy how the tech works, it's hard to believe the idea is simply "non-novel or obvious."

Re:You reap what you sow

[russotto]

I'm confused by your post.

Why, Mr. Cannata,, I thought it was quite self-explanatory.

Re:You reap what you sow

[spitzak]

You would still use that contractor if they promised to build a mansion for the same price as a shack and you knew they were the only ones that could do so.

Re:You reap what you sow

[spitzak]

You misunderstood the 8.3 patent. Storing all the information in a different file (as Profession Write does) is the "obvious" and thus unpatentable way of doing it. (also "obvious" is the idea of using more than 8.3 letters in a filename at all).

The novel part of the M$ scheme is to not use a separate file but to instead use extra hidden directory entries. This has the particular advantage that if an old system deletes all the files the directory really will look empty, rather than having an undeletable file of information. I think it is an innovation, in that every other known scheme used an extra file, and thus this M$ patent is not anywhere near as questionable as others.

That said, I have no idea why changing the 8.3 mangling could possibly work around the patent, which has been proposed, therefore I may not understand the patent and they may have somehow patented the wrong (and thus obvious) part. Name mangling I consider pretty obvious.

Re:You reap what you sow

[ClosedSource]

Didn't everybody say the Office Open XML was just a ploy so that MS could say they have an open format? If so, why would they "have to have it at any cost"? Sounds like a great way for MS to maintain closed standards while having a great excuse: "We came up with an open format but the courts wouldn't let us continue to use it".

Re:You reap what you sow

[Anonymous Coward]

in this case microsoft willingly copied i4i's idea, this is not a case of a patent troll. i4i invented the method and microsoft copied them

Re:You reap what you sow

[Daerath]

Really? Cite a source that confirms your claim that Microsoft stole i4i's code line for line. Go ahead.

I have a feeling

[Reason58]

In this case it appears that the courts will not have the last word.

Re:I have a feeling

[Reason58]

Getting their way is something Microsoft excels at. It is easy when you have access to their resources and the outlook to dominate any market they enter.

Powerpoint.

Re:I have a feeling

[jaavaaguru]

Word.

Re:I have a feeling

[NervousNerd]

Yeah, I took one note for this project I have. I'm going to take it to my publisher who has the information to deliver that info on the right path.

Re:I have a feeling

[pionzypher]

Thanks for the sharepoint.

Re:I have a feeling

[ColdWetDog]

Bob

Re:I have a feeling

[Tubal-Cain]

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

In fact, if you ever want to write a book I know a great Publisher.

Re:I have a feeling

[mgblst]

I guess that teaches i4i to keep their sourcesafe.

Re:I have a feeling

[dkleinsc]

They're just a bunch of explorers looking for windows of opportunity.

Re:I have a feeling

[ionix5891]

Clippy?!

This is all so wrong

[o TINY o]

State level judges should not have this much power to effect global companies. Decisions like this should only be enforceable at a supreme court level.

Re:This is all so wrong

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Other than "they are big", do you have a reason for that? How about frequent travelers? People with second homes in other countries?

Is there any good reason that being large and/or important should exempt you from the usual procedures of justice?

Re:This is all so wrong

[DragonWriter]

State level judges should not have this much power to effect global companies.

This isn't a "state-level" judge, its a federal judge.

Decisions like this should only be enforceable at a supreme court level.

The Constitution of the United States lays out the specific kinds of cases in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, other than that, all federal judicial power rests initially in lower trial courts, with the Supreme Court only hearing appeals (and, for the most part, not even direct appeals.)

Re:This is all so wrong

[geckipede]

It wouldn't be unreasonable to scale up the time taken for double checking facts in cases where so many people are going to be affected. The more significant the conse... oh sod it, I'll quote: "with great power comes great responsibility"

Re:This is all so wrong

[ceoyoyo]

Why should a state judge not be able to rule that a company selling a product in his jurisdiction is illegal? Just like this federal judge ruled selling a product in his jurisdiction is illegal.

By the way, global would be outside the jurisdiction of the US supreme court anyway.

Re:This is all so wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh... It might as well be 'global'. It's my understanding that an order applies to the company as a whole while they have operations within that jurisdiction. If so, Microsoft's in a world of hurt
over this little decision. They'd have to close down their fairly sizable operations in Dallas, TX and anywhere else within that District Court's jurisdiction to be able to tapdance around not being
made to stop all production. That Judge's ruling applies to them all the way up in Redmond and will affect their US sales of the product until they're at least out of his Jurisdiction- and there's
some not so pleasant consequences with them trying to side-step that. Unless they've got production capacity in Asia or Europe separate from the production capacity here in the States,
they're dead in the water on Office unless they can get the ruling appealed or get this stay in place- and even if they do, they can't sell (nor can the retailers...) any further copies of Word with
the offending technology within it within the US so long as they operate within the Jurisdiction.

This is...messy...for them. It's not going to help their stock valuation, I can tell you this much... :-D

I wonder if...

[Jahava]

I wonder if the request was delivered as a Word document.

Re:I wonder if...

[iron-kurton]

What if the judge can't open .docx files and he can't buy a new copy of Word? My head A-SPLODE

Re:I wonder if...

[freedomlinux]

docx? I don't think so. IANAL, but a friend who IAL suggests that many courts in Pennsylvania at least require filings to be made in PDF.
This really makes sense because PDF is an open format and it's harder to modify after receipt than a Word file.

Re:I wonder if...

[Dausha]

While you're being funny, if it was filed in Federal Court, the choices are Word Perfect or PDF...last I checked.

Re:I wonder if...

[CastrTroy]

Only harder to modify if you only have acrobat reader installed. If you only have MS Word document reader, both are equally hard to edit.

Re:I wonder if...

[znerk]

... PDF is an open format and it's harder to modify after receipt than a Word file.

You can edit PDF files in OpenOffice. It's not difficult.

Re:I wonder if...

[JamesP]

Kinda like the guy that shows up wasted to a DUI hearing.

One example they might follow...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Perhaps in the sealed document they'll point to Amazon's handling of the 1984 e-book, and offer to put a remote kill switch into any shipped copies of Word. If they ultimately lose the i4i infringement case, then - POOF - no problem!

Re:One example they might follow...

[RobertLTux]

"and offer to put a remote kill switch into any shipped copies of Word. "

they all ready have a remote kill switch this is a feature of everything from MS since Vista.

What was filed under seal

[Nom du Keyboard]

What was filed under seal:

Dear Judge, The world will end if we can't continue shipping Word.

Re:What was filed under seal

[Anonymous Coward]

What was filed under seal:

Dear Judge, The world will end if we can't continue shipping Word.

Because "first there was nothing, then there was the word" :)

Re:What was filed under seal

[Anonymous Coward]

What was filed under seal:

Dear Judge, The world will end if we can't continue shipping Word.

Dear Judge, The we will end the world if we can't continue shipping Word.

There, corrected that for you....

Why can software get patented again?

[Beltonius]

As far as I'm concerned, whoever wins in the end, all that's been demonstrated is how absurd software patents are.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[PRMan]

No. This is EXACTLY how patents are supposed to work. Without patents, the rich get richer and the poor, small software company ALWAYS LOSES.

In this case, they have won. Now the only argument is what is an appropriate remedy from Microsoft to them.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[mdwh2]

Without patents, the rich get richer and the poor, small software company ALWAYS LOSES.

This is a rare case where the smaller company may benefit. In most cases, the larger company will just point out the numerous patents of theirs that you're infringing, and then tell you how the case will be settled. In more cases still, the new company has no chance of patenting anything, so they're unable to enter the market, or risk being sued, because of the difficulties of bringing a product to market without stepping on every software algorithm and other idea that's already been patented by someone.

And I still don't understand taking their side just because they're smaller. Bad laws are bad laws. When that random company threatened to sue every ISP on the planet because they had a hyperlink patent, was everyone rooting for the little guy then?

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[prockcore]

Except this patent is nonsense.

The patent is a system that covers taking a plain text file, and saying "from character 3 to character 42 is bold, from character 67 to 90 is in sans-serif. characters 3 to 90 are the first paragraph" etc.

I can tell you this is exactly how the Quark file format works. Quark 6 and above even use XML to do the styles.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case, they have won.

This is where you are wrong. Nobody has won or lost yet. So far there was only one decision in a long chain of appeals, extensions of deadlines and so on.

This is also where you are wrong about the rich not prevailing over the poor. Microsoft can afford to drag out the process as long as legally possible. They have the money and the lawyers to do so. Even if they were violating a patent, they can still easily bankrupt the small company.

As much as I dislike Microsoft, from what I've read about the "patent" claim, I think that small company should be ground to a fine powder.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[Important Remark]

You are so insightful! You truly understand that only poor people can afford to patent about everything you can think of, whereas rich people are way too busy counting their money.
Patents should be for things that are hard to discover (like a practical application of a new or unknow way a material behaves, or the usefull effect of a substance on a human body), not for just an obvious idea of solving a problem. Any software patent is broken, because software is not hard to discover. Sometimes we may think we have a superclever idea, but usually it turns out that at least a hundred others have had that same idea too.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[tialaramex]

It's true.. sort of. The smallest software company wins. So the big software company gets sued by a smaller one, and then the smaller one gets sued by a single lawyer working out of a shared office.

He's not infringing you see, all he does is file for patents and write lawsuits. So he wins every time in your system.

Patent supporters mistake "economic activity" (moving money around) for economic _productivity_ ie actually making something. They maximise the former at the cost of the latter and end up up to their necks in debt.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's why small companies are such a huge demanding party for software patents...

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[sjames]

No. This is EXACTLY how patents are supposed to work. Without patents, the rich get richer and the poor, small software company ALWAYS LOSES.

In this case, they have won. Now the only argument is what is an appropriate remedy from Microsoft to them.

Unfortunately, that's also typically how things happen WITH patents, sometimes even moreso. It happened to work out right this time sort of like a stopped clock is still right twice a day.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[sjames]

Or, even more likely they'll just let you know that the case will drag on until you're bankrupt and then they will win by default. No point having that huge legal department sitting idle when they can be churning paperwork!

Then, if you're lucky they'll give you a nickel to go away.

Re:Why can software get patented again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but they won against Microsoft. That's the same as losing. They'll never see a dime....

I think it was more like this:

[CorporateSuit]

The current location of your daughter is in the attached file. Unfortunately for you, this file can only be read by the latest software version of Word we're commercially releasing next week.

--
File attached: clownfart.wdoc

They may win this one

[JoshuaZ]

In general, the idea behind injunctions is to minimize irrepairable harm. If this injunction stands and Microsoft then wins the case that would result in what amounts of major irrepairable harm to Microsoft given the large amount of software they would need to sell in the meantime with reduced functionality. However, allowing Microsoft to continue to sell the software will have less of an impact on the company suing since there are already so many copies of Word out there.

Re:They may win this one

[AnotherBlackHat]

if this injunction stands and Microsoft then wins the case...

This isn't a preliminary injunction, they already lost the case.

Re:They may win this one

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of an appeal, but it turns out they exist.

Re:They may win this one

[mysidia]

Microsoft already lost the case, they were already ordered to pay $200 million which they have so far refused to do.

Normally, once the court finds you liable and orders you to pay, you have to actually do what they ordered you to do, or face sanctions and additional injunctions, like they have.

MS has only themselves to blame, they should have paid the $200 million to the court.

Suck it Microsoft!

[erroneus]

You built this mess of "software patents" and it's way past time that it started to bite you in the ass. "Motion Denied" (and also suck-it!)

Re:Suck it Microsoft!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you nigsausage!

XML but not CSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please explain to me how this patent pertains to XML documents, but not the Cascading Style Sheets? To me it seems like the same thing.
This patent seems a bit too generic...
Anyone Agree/Disagree?

more patent troll cases please

[OrangeTide]

Eventually big corporations will lobby the governments for some real patent reform. Once the patent system makes it impossible for businesses to turn a profit something will have to give. Hopefully when the reform comes it will be done in a way that allows for a level playing field for all. I can't think of too many ways of reform that would make things worse while giving businesses a way out of the patent troll fiasco. Any way out for them is, I believe, going to benefit everyone.

There are lots of possible solutions I can see. reduce the duration of patents. increase the filing cost(and require the increases costs provide some valuable service to the patent holder). have penalties for failed infringements(this is basically impossible because you would just file a claim in a court that favors you). Probably many more that are even better that I didn't even consider (I'm just a layperson).

Re:more patent troll cases please

[sconeu]

Eventually big corporations will lobby the governments for some real patent reform.

And it will look like:

Only corporations with gross revenues of more than $XXX,XXX.XXX will be allowed to hold patents.
They shall not be held liable for violating any patents held by smaller entities.

Re:more patent troll cases please

[OrangeTide]

highly unlikely.

Sealed?

[Tubal-Cain]

On Friday Microsoft filed an emergency motion to stop the judgment and waive the bond requirement, according to court filings. The actual document was filed under seal, so the full contents of the request have not yet been made public.

Why on Earth does a way seal court documents even exist?

Maybe Microsoft should change its Bilski breif?

[Anonymous Coward]

> So now that it's Microsoft, software patents are okay, just so long as the company suing are not "trolls"?

No, they're not okay. But it's hard to see how Microsoft isn't getting its just deserts.

Perhaps Microsoft should rethink its amicus brief in Bilski and start arguing that these sorts of patents should be invalid? There's at least a credible claim that Bilski could be used to invalidate this patent. And it's pretty clear, ironically, that Microsoft's amicus brief is arguing that Bilski should NOT be held to do that (at least, not in general).

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, as Nelson would put it, "Ha ha!"

If they'd argued that these patents should not be allowed, they would not be in this position. Of course, they could also avoid gobbling up partner's products, too, but they're the 800 lbs gorilla. If you have a banana and they want it, they're going to take it from you, laws be damned. You shouldn't do business with them and be ignorant of that fact, because it has nothing to do with patents, it's just how they operate.

Re:Maybe Microsoft should change its Bilski breif?

[mdwh2]

Oh, yes I fully agree with this point of view. It just felt like there was a pro-patents point of view in general for some of the comments, as opposed to a "ha ha", as you say.

Assassins

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to start an online petition. Microsoft should use the money and hire assassins to take out the entire USPTO, who wants to sign it?

Conelrad test..

[Alien Being]

This is a useless message to test the Oligarchy Control System. Please hide under the nearest desk to avoid falling chairs from the planet Uranus.

If this had been an actual emergency, M$ wouldn't have been assfucking millions of people for so many years.

This concludes this test of the emergency ass-fuck avoidance system.

Wait, let me get this straight...

[jonadab]

Microsoft wants to *continue* selling one of its biggest products?

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Oh No!

[Phusion0]

Whatever will we do!

Waive the Bond?

[DannyO152]

I wonder what the reason for this is and how frequently is this request granted.

Any way, that's at least the second thing I remember this summer (the first being the buy now at 60% off deal on the various Windows 7s) that suggests Microsoft has a cash flow issue at the moment.

Regarding the judgment, remember 90 million was tacked on by the judge to make Microsoft pay for its lawyers' behavior.

MOD PARENT UP, NOT DOWN.

[znerk]

im4aired its JESUS UP THE

We shouldn't be modding these down, we should be modding them up. Yes, they're annoying and nonsensical (or even offensive) - but it's fairly obvious that these types of comments are computer-generated, so it becomes obvious that someone/something is breaking the captcha - modding these comments down just helps them hide the fact that they can spam slashdot any time they want to. How many of us browse at -1?

Mod these comments +1, Interesting, and maybe it will attract someone's attention that slashdot is more broken than they think.

To protect...

[Petersko]

"Why on Earth does a way seal court documents even exist?"

To protect trade secrets under dispute, or to protect the identities of minors. Those are the two reasons that spring directly to mind. I'm sure there are others.

Re:To protect...

[Anonymous Coward]

Trade secrets in a patent case form the defence?

Law and ... Order?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see Law, but the Order is long gone...

$290 million!?

[mayberry42]

I thought it was $240 mil. Is that a typo or have they been fined again?

Microsoft was fighting tooth and nail.

[miffo.swe]

After reading the verdict its pretty clear that Microsoft knew about this patent and i4i long before they implemented custom XML. Its probable that they did infact learn about custom XML through i4is products and patents. Internal mails was shown where Microsoft did mention i4i and even their patent numbers.

It looks as if Microsofts counsels has done pretty much anything possible to defend themselves but the case is so darn clearcut that they just cant win. The problem for Microsoft is that Office Open XML has now become i4is bitch while ODF is wholly in the clear and unencumbered by i4i patents (according to i4i). Since ECMA-376 contains the i4i patented technology in the standard its worthless to anyone in the US.

Re:Microsoft was fighting tooth and nail.

[RedFlames]

Why would they sue ODF when it has zero revenue-generating ability? They'd much rather wait until some productive company uses the ODF standard to make billions of dollars - and then sue. You never sue for your patent until your target company is large; that's Patent Trolling 101.

Re:Microsoft was fighting tooth and nail.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know many Government Agencies dismiss "Open Source" because of "patent and IP issues" and talk about OS evaluation and if feasable ... issues - but never really mean a word of it. And if they buy off some big established company, they will be 'safe'.

After this, I hope they HONESTLY evaluate software for SOA platforms , risk of being stuck, and go for something that has NOT been in injunctions. I may be missing something- but large Sharepoint Databases should be in for a walloping.
 

Dear Judge

[Kazymyr]

"Dear Judge,

I know you have issued a judgment against me saying I'm not allowed to beat my wife. I have full intent to comply with the law. However if I stop beating my wife I will... ummm... I will... suffer significant psychological damage. That's it! Psychological damage. So I would like to file this motion saying that, while another judge double-checks your homework, I should be allowed to continue beating my wife. Respectfully yours,

Microsoft"

Yeah. I'm sure that would go well.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm sealed = hiding something?

hmm sealed = payoff?

hmm

Pricks

[Anonymous Coward]

These court systems are full of pricks.

ITS AN EMERGENCY!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its an EMERGENCY your honor, and EMERGENCY! We discovered that simply waving our hands up and down a few times wasn't enough to get rid of the infringing parts. We don't want ODF, I'll say that again WE DON"T WANT ODF TO BECOME SOME KIND OF STANDARD OR SOMETHING!!! Think of the billions of dollars our shareholders could lose! Think of the profits! We would be breaking the law by not looking our for our shareholders! It doesn't matter whether we break the law to protect them! So we'll pay a billion in fines to still keep making two every quarter. Without product to ship, well then WE WOULD HAVE NO PRODUCT TO SHIP! We have 3000000 CD's sitting here. Each one is worth 20 cents, but if we put a price tag of $700 on each one, we turn $600000 worth of plastic into $2100000000. Thats a small markup of 350,000%. Its how we do business.

Who wants to take credit for MS Word?

[ClosedSource]

MS Word doesn't have to go away just to allow people to use OOo. Those who want to do it already.

As for buying software and support "from the people who actually develop it", I wasn't aware that somebody other than MS was claiming they developed Word. Even if MS ends up losing this case on appeal, this XML feature represents a tiny fraction of the code and functionality of the product.

Re:Who wants to take credit for MS Word?

[Runaway1956]

"I wasn't aware that somebody other than MS was claiming they developed Word"

As tiny a bit as you seem to think this feature is, it wasn't developed by MS. It was stolen. Steal a bit here, steal a bit there - doesn't that sound familiar? What was that suit about JVM?

"Those who want to (use OOo) do it already."

That may not be entirely true. Read "lock-in".

Corporate karma in action

[Helldesk Hound]

They CAN continue to sell MS Office - so long as they remove support for customized-XML based documents. As most users still use the older binary file formats this will not be an issue for them.

Also, if Microsoft wants to continue to use XML based documents they can always correct its poor implementation of the ISO-approved Open Document file formats as these are based on the published XML standard (along with several other tried and proven standards) and have been confirmed as not infringing this patent.

[rolls eyes]
Oh yeah - Microsoft doesn't want to use a well documented file format that is already implemented in multiple office productivity suites as that would promote [shudder] "Interoperability" and we all know how keen (ie it isn't!) Microsoft is to have its software behaving nicely with the software of other developers.

Sorry, but that's how I feel on the matter, and that's the dominant behaviour that I can see demonstrated in Microsoft's track record stretching from as recently as it forcefully ramrodding a flawed >6000-page MS Office Open XML specification through a fast-tracked standardization process and as far back as MS-DOS... [blah blah blah]

I have to admit a bias given that I am opposed to all software patents due to my fundamental belief that mathematics and mathmatical algorithms cannot be patented and that software is entirely and only mathematics and algorithms.

Microsoft has used its giant collection of software patents to stifle innovation and competition and I see this as merely some other company's patent being used to stifle innovation and competition, but this time the target is Microsoft. Heh heh - I see it as a good example of corporate karma in action.

Re:Corporate karma in action

[ClosedSource]

"They CAN continue to sell MS Office - so long as they remove support for customized-XML based documents"

No they can't continue to sell MS Office, they CAN sell a new version of Office with that feature removed. That's quite a difference and will be very expensive to do since it involves brick-and-mortar stores, not just updating a download.

Re:Corporate karma in action

[Helldesk Hound]

> No they can't continue to sell MS Office, they CAN sell a new version of Office
> with that feature removed. That's quite a difference and will be very expensive
> to do since it involves brick-and-mortar stores, not just updating a download.

Selling a new release of Microsoft Office is still selling Microsoft Office.

The important thing is that they remove the patent-infringing features.

BTW, most sold versions of MS Office are OEM versions. All Microsoft would have to do is to merely provide another CD copy.

Given that CDs are extremely inexpensive to manufacture, and given that Microsoft is so extremely wealthy due to the massive profit margins that it has been extorting over the years I see negligible harm against Microsoft for having to recall unsold copies of Microsoft Office and replace them with non-infringing copies.

Actually, I think that Microsoft should go a step further and issue a critical service pack to remove the infringing features in all extant versions of Microsoft Office - because the patent owner has already been significantly harmed by Microsoft's actions and this should be remedied. And in this respect I think that the judge was too lenient on Microsoft.

Re:Corporate karma in action

[ClosedSource]

Oh, sure. Once MS removes the feature the number of the patent owner's customers will reach double-digits.

Patents are Potentially more Powerful weapons

[Helldesk Hound]

> If they stole code line for line, why is this a
> patent case and not a copyright infringement case?

Because they can potentially get more money from a patent infringement case, and because if they only sued for copyright infringement Microsoft could simply rewrite the infringing section of code to not include the infringing lines of code and then still be using Custom XML in violation of the patent in question.