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."
Er now there's a surprise . . .
If they had concentrated on reforming the patent system, instead of just bolstering their patent portfolio, they could have prevented this. But instead, they prize their own ability to do this to the little guy too highly.
They are reaping what they sowed. It doesn't make the patent troll any less despicable though.
If i4i wins the appeal, the court can make Microsoft pay for the unlicensed use of the patent. This way the patent still does what patents are supposed to do in most general terms: reward the inventor for sharing his inventor with the public. If Microsoft wins, i4i might not be able to reimburse them for lost sales.
This said, I think software patents are counterproductive and should be abolished. And maybe patents in general. For an interesting e-book on this topic, see http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
But it still would be fun to see Microsoft's cash cow whacked with the patent hammer. Especially after their petty lawsuit against TomTom.
C - the footgun of programming languages
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.
money buys justice. But this is the age of the internet, where information is everywhere and nobody reads anything. So "word" is obsolete. All we need is YouTube!
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
Prior art up the wazoo means they are still a patent troll.
Have you actually read the patent? Care to suggest any suitable prior art?
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...
Microsoft's court papers cite a number of SGML editors that implement more or less the same features, in various combinations; anything that i4i implements that wasn't already in them is a pretty obvious extension or adaptation. The court didn't find that argument persuasive, because the non-obviousness bar for software patents is so ludicrously low that "clicking once" is a valid patent.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The entire planetary commercial ecosystem would grind to a halt without Microsoft Office ...
--
Ubersoft Marketing Language
The legal system in the US is fixated on maintaining the status quo when it comes to major corporations. There is this "too big to (fail/not be sold)" mentality and that's what's saving Word. If it was "Joe's Word Processor" that was the infringing software, the sales injunction would have held.
It's a shame, because I would have really liked to see Dell and the others putting OpenOffice or another alternative on their computers for a few months while this thing got sorted out. And that's what should have happened. The products that didn't violate patents should have been given a competitive advantage over those that did.
M$ 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.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today"
-- Bill Gates in his "Challenges and Strategy" memo 16 May 1991
Microsoft does support reform. "Reform" means making litigation harder for certain types of companies (small companies and companies that don't have a successful product based on the patents), reducing the time for granting patents, and reducing the amount that an infringer can have to pay (by dropping the incentives for litigation, patent trolls should be less common).
All these measures are good for Microsoft and other dominant players who want to use their portfolio strategically to entrench their positions, but these aren't enough to fix society's problems. We need to abolition of software patents, not any kind of reform.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Allow me to paraphrase.
"Patent trolls suck, but I want my favorite patent troll to win!"
FFS, unless MS actually loses money, they won't "get behind patent reform" because their strategy will have been successful. If your logic is logic at all, then you WANT MS to lose a billion fucking dollars. THEN MS will actively lobby for patent reform.
"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
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.
Except that the SGML editors don't, as far as I can tell. Certainly, the one I looked at that Microsoft cited in fact turned out to be nothing like the patent.
Gran, I've fetched your double-dose prescription - see you in the morning OK?
Microsoft has already lost over a billion dollars from their previous patent lawsuits. It doesn't seem to have prompted them to support patent reform yet. I would guess they would need to be hit for at least 20 billion to change their minds.
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.
You may be right - we are speculating, of course. But, every loss for MS focuses a little more attention an the problem. Of course, the attention that is really required is the attention of investors. They have been reaping a lot of profit over the years. When that profit begins to slow down, they will sit up and take notice. When they take notice, they talk to the people who actually run the company, etc etc.....
1 billion, 5 billion, or 20 billion, whatever it takes, I want to see it happen!
"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
Anonymous Coward wrote:
I must respectfully disagree with the last sentence. Although Microsoft (MS) is dominant in the computer industry, it is not the only player. In the case of operating systems and office applications, there are alternatives.
As an example, I've been using StarOffice for a few years, and for the most part I've found it a viable alternative to MS Office for spreadsheets and writing (especially since I prefer to use a spreadsheet as a database instead of a specific database application). It's not as powerful, but it works fine for what I use it for.
If this case results in MS Office no longer being legally available (a very unlikely result), people will find workable alternatives for each of the applications. I think that regardless of the final results of this case, it is likely that some people/businesses may consider alternatives to MS Office due to it.
There are other alternatives to Microsoft products, such as Linux, Open Office, Mac OS, etc., so please explain to me how they are a monopoly. They dominate the market, but other products, such as Apple's iPod or Google's search engine also dominate the market without being labeled monopolies.
They were convicted in a U.S. court, but the U.S. legal system is probably the worst in the civilized world, with the dumbest judges and juries, and the greediest, most unscrupulous lawyers.
I4i's patent is vague and, where it's not vague, it's obvious. There is probably not a non-trivial software system out there that doesn't infringe on someone's software patent. If all the patents were enforced, the software development industry would come to a halt and we would all be out of a job. Maybe Microsoft is evil, but if they are, then i4i is a demon from Hell by comparison.