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."
Evidence?
Err, sorry, I mean, do you have any EVIDENCE for any of that?
Why is it OK to be against software patents on one day, except when it's someone you despise on the wrong end of a lawsuit? What makes this patent holier than all the rest, and why do you think OpenOffice and other programs would remain safe? i4i's promise not to sue Sun later on is not binding, and there are only half a million projects out there that use XML and support custom schemas. Fuck, Word is just the tip of the iceberg here. Microsoft's successor to the GDI framework, WPF, uses XML and supports custom schemas defined by the user (or in this case, developer.) I can add a element for example, with custom binding, properties, etc. Is that infringing?
Help me make sense of this. Where does this insanity end?
So? Almost all software patents have implementations. That doesn't make them legit.
I don't get why Slashdot screams bloody murder when software patents are brought up in conversation about open source products, but when Microsoft or one of the "bad guys" is on the receiving end of a lawsuit it's A-OK with you guys.
You are the cancer that is killing /., is what I'm trying to say. They aren't a patent troll? Come on, grow up. You can be a patent troll with a product, just like all those other software patent trolls that have a product, or have licensed it at some point, or whatever. If having patents and a product means you're not a patent troll, then I guess that mean's Google's patent on their home page is legit? Or IBM's patent for a business process to produce patents, or whatever it was? Because they use both of those, obviously, so that means if they sue someone for it, they're clearly not trolls?
That's what your logic works out to. How about we adjust your definition of patent troll so you can stop apologizing for i4i. New definition of patent troll: a company or individual who uses patents that are not legitimate non-obvious, novel inventions in order to acquire money by suing whomever looks like a good target, usually in an East Texas court room.
Does that sound like i4i to you?
Corporations tend to do slimy things for the sake of profit, but a lot of these allegations are tenuous at best. Hey, I'd love to see proof OOXML was bribed into being a standard, to see its ISO certification disappear. It is a nasty, long, dense standard that doesn't help anyone but them. It'd be great if instead they contributed vital enhancements to ODF.
On the other hand, they're on the receiving end of a truly absurd amount of FUD at Slashdot.