Slashdot Mirror
Court Allows Microsoft To Sell Word During Appeal
An anonymous reader sends along this update to the ongoing patent battle between Microsoft and i4i involving XML formatting in Word.
"Microsoft's motion to stay an injunction has been granted; the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has allowed the company to keep selling Word as it appeals a patent ruling from last month. The injunction had an effective date of October 10, but the motion to stay blocks the injunction until the appeal process is complete. If upheld, the injunction wouldn't stop existing users from using Word, but it could prevent the software giant from selling Word 2003 or Word 2007, the most common versions of Word currently on the market, and would require the company to significantly tweak Word 2010, which is slated for the first half of next year. The victory is a small one for Microsoft; the company still has the whole appeals process to go through. 'We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on September 23,' a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. 'Microsoft's scare tactics about the consequences of the injunction cannot shield it from the imminent review of the case by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeal on the September 23 appeal,' said i4i chairman Loudon Owen in response to the court's decision."
Well this story at least is about them getting a stay of execution, so they are indeed reaping what they sow (political/judicial power due to massive economic influence) but not in the way you suggest. Perhaps they will lose this case and have to pony up some dollar but if anyone thinks the sale of Word is going to be impeded for even a day then they are naive in the extreme.
Except that this case isn't from a patent troll. These guys did the development, sell a product and tried to sell it to MS, who turned around and built their own. This is the kind of case the patent system should be handling.
Actually, if I4I had been smart, they'd have sold out to a patent troll, took the money and run.
I am pretty sure Microsoft is more than capable of making this lawsuit last as long as they want to. Until, e.g. they do not use the tech anymore...
Ugh. If this was Google defending their patent portfolio
Microsoft isn't "defending its patent portfolio." It's being sued for infringement by a competitor, and even that competitor isn't "defending its own patent portfolio", it's suing to protect its business, using its patent portfolio (which might be just this one patent, for all we know).
I appreciate a preemptive "You're all Google fanbois, if it was Microsoft, blah blah" rant for it's humor value, but at least take your trolling seriously.
On slashdot, probably never. They won't stop MS bashing until both it and Bill Gates are dead. Then they'll bash whatever company took the top slot on the techie pain chain. Hey, if history had been a little different, it would have been Apple and Stevie getting the grease job...
There are people that will complain about anything, without regards to accuracy or fairness. I'm all for pointing out problems, but I don't know enough of this exact situation to decide at this point. Other than my basic feeling that Software Patents are B.S. is a big way, copyright is more than sufficient for software.
But even with the previous stated limits of knowledge, if MS knowing violated the i4i patent, they deserve to get burned. On the other hand, the descriptions I've been seeing of i4is patent sound extremely likely to be a garbage patent that should never have been granted. (I admit I haven't read the actual patent for two reasons, one, I'm not a patent lawyer and probably get confused with the lawspeak, and two, I haven't found it yet to read...) (slashdot effect still works, just like gravity...)
Yeah, to reiterate. This is slashdot, they want microsoft to be their bitch...
M$ has more money than i4i.
M$ wins in court.
Case closed.
That's how the legal system works nowadays.
Lobbying, bribes and little brown envelopes under the table.
M$ even support bribery in their own in-house information.
"On slashdot, probably never. They won't stop MS bashing until both it and Bill Gates are dead. Then they'll bash whatever company took the top slot on the techie pain chain. Hey, if history had been a little different, it would have been Apple and Stevie getting the grease job..."
It's amazing how many morons are willing to defend a company that based it's growth on dishonesty. "If history had been a little different" my ass. N. Korea's Kim il Jung is despised because he's a ruthless bastard. Bill Gates is despised because he's a ruthless bastard. How could history have been a little different?
Get over yourself.
Maybe your next astroturfing job will be in a nice big football stadium somewhere, and people will actually appreciate your work.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
They've ponyed up well over a billion dollars in the last five years alone. Another fine won't change anything.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Ugh. If this was Google defending their patent portfolio (like the idiotic patent they just took out on their homepage) I bet we'd have all the corporate flavour of the week groupies heralding their courageousness in fighting patent trolls. But because it's Microsoft, we have idiots like parent poster saying they should abandon the lawsuit and instead seek to reform the patent system.
When are people going to grow up and look at the world with at least at attempt at objectivity?
Hey, goon. Where have you been all these years when Microsoft have been abusing its customers, Its competitors, and the marketplace? Microsoft accuses competitors of violating its crappy patents. And refuses to identify said patents to the people they are accusing of stealing the so called "intellectual Property" Instead it is running an extortion/protection racket going around to companies behind the scenes telling them to pay Microsoft for LINUX CODE. People had busted their ass to create GNU/LInux based operating systems and MS thinks its ok to go EXTORT companies for code they have nothing to do with. They LIE in the marketplace about competitors products. They funneled money to SCO to keep their lawsuit going against Linux. They commissioned false studies claiming their product is superior. They are LIARS and totaly untrustworthy. They have BRIBED officials in international standards bodies along with egregiously stacking voting panels in their favor. They are slimy mobsters.
So you see goon? They reaped what they sew. And no one but goons like you are sympathetic to them because they are slime.
But did patents ever work as expected?
According to chapter 1 of "Against Intellectual Monopoly" (see my first post), the patents of Boulton and Watt impeded the development of the steam engine rather than promoting it. That was 200+ years ago. Today we still have similar problems. That is reason enough to doubt the usefulness of patents in general.
C - the footgun of programming languages
If MS was my business, it wouldn't have been out stealing i4i's IP and then directly going after their customer base.
I4i has just as much of a right to sell it's software as MS does. MS interfered with I4i's ability to sell their product, now they need just shut up and take their medicine.
I get so sick of people defending the indefensible, of people following MS's lead and supporting corrupt business practices.
I'm sorry for the late response. I spent the first half hour trying to post from my copy of 1984, but eventually concluded that there is in fact a difference, and went back to the approach of using software rather than books ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Nah. Only until Microsoft no longer has a functional monopoly, and isn't seen as a danger. Look what happened to IBM. Let Microsoft drop to that level of influence (and IBM is still a very large company) and we'll mostly drop the bashing.
Almost certainly true, although it doesn't reflect badly on the community.
Techies respect technical excellence, and dislike marketers, with good reason. There are plenty of companies that behave themselves ethically and sell technical excellence. However, that's not how companies get to the top.
IBM was not as unscrupulous as Microsoft, but it was ruthless. Standard policy was to sell to levels above the techies, and so the techies had IBM equipment forced on them, whether or not it was the right stuff for the job. While IBM was into research and technology, that wasn't the primary drive. It was sales and marketing.
Any company that comes to be the next IBM or Microsoft will do so by ruthless marketing, and techies will be forced to cope. If that company becomes an effective monopoly (as IBM was and Microsoft is), it will distort the techie world, and impede innovation and technical advancement, and other things techies value.
So, the good news for Microsoft, insofar as Microsoft cares about us, is that if Microsoft market share drops to maybe 50% or so, so that competing OSs are viable options in most circumstances, and so that Microsoft needs to take interoperability seriously, we'll stop bashing Microsoft.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If this was Google defending their patent portfolio (like the idiotic patent they just took out on their homepage) I bet we'd have all the corporate flavour of the week groupies heralding their courageousness in fighting patent trolls. But because it's Microsoft, we have idiots like parent poster saying they should abandon the lawsuit and instead seek to reform the patent system.
Google's "patent" is just a design patent, which is massively different from what most people think of as a patent. It is only the fact that Slashdot editors are incompetent that it got here.
Second, the i4i suit does not involve any patent trolls.
The legal system in the US is fixated on maintaining the status quo when it comes to major corporations.
The legal systems in the U.S. tend to preserve the status quo in any litigation until a final decision is rendered.
Microsoft is a multi-national with $60 billion in revenues and no significant debt. It is in no way seriously threatened.
But a similar injunction against a geek's one-man operation would be ruinous.
it's suing to protect its business
Correct. It's not a patent troll. It's a company with working product who attempted a partnership, got rebuffed by Microsoft after they jumped through hoops and Microsoft went ahead and used their technology anyway.
It's typical Microsoft. If they can hold off payment of the lawsuit long enough, they get the IP they stole for free.
No, it was always just a plain patent infringement case about using XML for the reason that the mark up language was created. The sad part is that i4i created a product that uses Word for all of its user interface. That means they are using way more of Microsoft's code in their own product than Microsoft could have ever "stolen" from them.
How is writing a plugin for Word make i4i using "Microsoft code in their own product" ? If Microsoft is not OK with the plugin they could have removed the plugin functionality form Word instead of really stealing from i4i.