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Court Allows Microsoft To Sell Word During Appeal

Posted by Soulskill on from the back-in-the-saddle dept.

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."

19 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Surprise by siloko · · Score: 3, Funny

    Er now there's a surprise . . .

    1. Re:Surprise by Wowsers · · Score: 5, Funny

      We at Microsoft are doing nothing wrong, I give you my Word... bundled with Excel, Powerpoint........

      --
      Take Nobody's Word For It.
  2. Sauce for the goose. by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Sauce for the goose. by siloko · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Sauce for the goose. by kripkenstein · · Score: 5, Informative

      They are reaping what they sowed. It doesn't make the patent troll any less despicable though.

      How many times does this need to be pointed out? i4i is not a patent troll. That doesn't mean they're cute and cuddly panda bears, but they aren't a patent troll, which is defined as suing over patents without having an actual product (or in other words, suing over patents is a patent troll's business model, not building things). i4i does have an actual product, and they claim that Microsoft is competing against their product; after convincing a judge of that, they got the injunction.

    3. Re:Sauce for the goose. by gbjbaanb · · Score: 5, Informative

      i4i does have an actual product, and they claim that Microsoft is competing against their product; after convincing a judge of that, they got the injunction.

      I thought the case revolved around Microsoft stealing their product, not competing against it. That Microsoft took their product and bundled their own rather-similar-indeed implementation directly into Word, and that the patent is the only thing i4i has that they can sue MS over. But yes, to re-iterate i4i is not, in any shape or form, a patent troll and this is one case where the patent system is actually working as intended!

      Microsoft was very naughty and deserves to sit on the 'do not collect $200 per copy' step.

    4. Re:Sauce for the goose. by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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
    5. Re:Sauce for the goose. by andydread · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Sauce for the goose. by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    7. Re:Sauce for the goose. by botik32 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Way to paint Microsoft as the victim here.

      According to GrokLaw, this is what happened:

      Whether or not the patent should have been granted is not the issue at this point. It was.
      The plaintiff (i4i) had a successful add-on for MS Word that it was selling. In 2003, Microsoft added the same functionality to Word. Microsoft then refused all attempts on i4i's part to license the functionality.
      The license fees requested were on the order of $25M. It was Microsoft's repeated refusal to negotiate that resulted in not only a large award, but punitive damages as well.
      They (Microsoft) were found liable for willful infringement, so yes, they did steal the patented method.

      The weird thing here is that this is actually a case of a patent working the way that patents are supposed to work:

      Company A comes up with a reasonably unique and functional solution to a broad problem, patents it and starts selling it. They take it to mega-corp B who has a problem that can be easily solved with company A's product, and mega-corp B -- rather than negotiate with company A, simply steals their design, and incorporates it into their product in the expectation that this will be sufficient to run company A into the ground before any litigation can come to fruition.

      The thing to note here, is that I4I's patent isn't just for an idea, it's actually for a real product and an apparently graceful solution to what had previously been an intractible problem.

      The XML implementation is simply a specific implementation of their patent, but -- once you have XML -- it's not the only XML solution or even (for many people) the best XML solution.

      It is starting to look like they didn't patent the general idea of adding meta-data to a file. They patented a specific way of organizing that meta-data to produce a specific result.

      In the broader context of software patents being a bad idea, I would be inclined to classify this as an example of 'good case, bad law'. It is somewhat gratifying to see software patents put to a good use, for once.

    8. Re:Sauce for the goose. by david_thornley · · Score: 3, Insightful

      On slashdot, probably never. They won't stop MS bashing until both it and Bill Gates are dead.

      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.

      Then they'll bash whatever company took the top slot on the techie pain chain.

      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
  3. Seems appropriate by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Seems appropriate by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "If I write a book, I want to be able to sell it and get paid for it. I cannot patent the contents of a book. What makes software any different?"

      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
  4. Re:no one wins when patent trolls do. by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  5. what a relief .. by viralMeme · · Score: 5, Funny

    The entire planetary commercial ecosystem would grind to a halt without Microsoft Office ...
    --

    Ubersoft Marketing Language

    1. Re:what a relief .. by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, it's terrible.

      What we need is some kind of "open" office suite of tools, to replace Microsoft Office.

      Someone should start a project.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  6. Status Quo by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. A fine won't change things by H4x0r+Jim+Duggan · · Score: 4, Insightful

        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
  8. Re:no one wins when patent trolls do. by makomk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.