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Microsoft Ordered To Pay $290M, Stop Selling Word
Cytalk and other readers tipped us to Microsoft's loss in a US appeals court, in a patent case brought by Canadian company i4i. Microsoft must now pay $290M and either stop selling Word (and probably Office) by January 11, or somehow work around the patent by that date. A Seattle PI blog reports that Redmond has a few options left: "In a statement, Microsoft said it was working hard to comply with the injunction. The company also said it is considering further legal options, including possible requests for a new hearing or a writ of certiorari from the US Supreme Court." Update: 12/22 20:47 GMT by KD : Tim Bray has up a blog post explaining why it would be no great loss if Microsoft dropped the "custom XML" feature in dispute.
Update: 12/22 23:04 GMT by KD : Reader adeelarshad82 pointed out a statement released by Microsoft earlier today, which says in part: "We expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction."
Update: 12/22 23:04 GMT by KD : Reader adeelarshad82 pointed out a statement released by Microsoft earlier today, which says in part: "We expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction."
This is stupid because Microsoft was moving here to open XML standards from their propriety .doc format. It's a common thing to blame MS for their locked in, own formats since Open Office and others couldn't open them.
i4i's patent is basically XML (yes it really is, read the patent claims). They're not a patent troll in that way that they did actually come up with the same system before everyone else, but afterwards W3C created what is called XML. But i4i was silent for years, everyone started using XML and to improve intercompatibility with Word documents, MS started using it too.
i4i got its big hit. But unless MS takes this to supreme court, it basically means they can sue everyone and every software that uses XML. And there's tons of them, even games and mobile phones too.
Actually if Microsoft just bought out the i4i company like it did Hotmail and others, it would then own those patents. Then they would pay the $290M to themselves, raid the i4i company for key personnel, IP, and other patents and source code, and then close it down after sucking all of the marrow out of i4i's bones.
Corporate Cannibalism is the word I would use to call that.
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*clap. clap. clap.*
Wow. Big round of applause for the hard working programmers at i4i. Weren't they so clever. Are they not ultra geniuses who deserve every penny of that $250 million for giving the world such a unique and otherwise unobtainable technology. Don't they deserve a lifelong monopoly of every even half related technology for the next 20 years. Don't they deserve complete and utter protection from the competing forces that are present in and lead to the improvement of all other economic sectors? It's only fair right? I mean, no none else would ever have been able to come up with anything remotely similar without having read the patents in question right?
And shame, shame on Microsoft for stealing all that hard earned work from these honest boys. You'd swear they wrote and implemented all their own code or something!
May the Maths Be with you!
Not only that but M$ held up proceedings by dumping truckloads of irrelevant information that required the original committee thousands of hours wasting time checking the irrelevance. They are dirty, scummy & Stevie-babee (I'm gonna f^%king kill Google), is the top of the pile.