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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."
the sealed bond is just the publicly available document and the rest is just stuffed with $100 bills.
Even if this is unquestionably a patent violation, the Supreme Court has already held, in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. (2006), that an injunction prohibiting sale of the infringing product is not necessarily the appropriate remedy in all cases. Rather, the traditional four factors for issuing an injunction must be balanced: 1) that the injury is irreparable; 2) that there are inadequate alternate remedies to compensate for the injury; 3) that the balance of hardships favors the plaintiff; and 4) that an injunction does not harm the public interest. Microsoft has an least a plausible argument that they are not satisfied in this case, and that alternate remedies (perhaps money damages) would be better than an injunction against sale, even if indeed Word is infringing.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
In this case it appears that the courts will not have the last word.
I wonder if the request was delivered as a Word document.
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.
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.
What was filed under seal:
Dear Judge, The world will end if we can't continue shipping Word.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
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?
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
As far as I'm concerned, whoever wins in the end, all that's been demonstrated is how absurd software patents are.
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
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Except that the plaintiffs are not patent trolls and have a real and verifiable grievance.
if this injunction stands and Microsoft then wins the case...
This isn't a preliminary injunction, they already lost the case.
That's a bit too narrow.
Justice Bradley stated, in 1882
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
HTTP/1.1 400