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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.
"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.
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