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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.
Does this mean patents are good? Where do I, as an average slashbot, stand on this issue today?
Now that MS is at the receiving end of the stick on one of their BIGGEST money making products, I wonder if we might see their tune change on support for software patents...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
--Greg
"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."
They could, you know, settle with i4i and license the patent from them?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I think i4i's patent is legitimate (I'm not really very familiar with this case - somehow missed it before this, will need to study up on it more later). I'm just saying, the list of options seems to leave out one pretty big possibility.
Power structures serve the powerful first. Microsoft wants the patent regime, but it doesn't want situations like this. When the powerful get shafted, then we can expect patent reform.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
that i4i's stock price grew THREE sizes that day.
Something doesn't add up here. Why is i4i not simply willing to license the rights to use the patent to MS (for an exorbitant fee). Why ask for it to be removed? Seems like a license to print money.
I assume you know that OOXML is a proprietary MS format couched in the clothing of an international standard? That it was only approved by ISO after MS manipulated the procedures, bribed partners to stack committees, and completely destroyed the technical committee? Where MS is now abusing the "correction of drafting errors" mechanism to make material changes to the standard so that it continuously conforms to the behaviour of MS's proprietary software (including reversing changes specifically made by the ISO committee!) -- instead of having their software conform to the so-called "standard". This is not to say I support software patents, especially on trivial ideas like a specific format for embedding proprietary data in an XML file (what i4i has "invented"). However, you should not fall for the MS "openness" scam. Just because it's XML doesn't mean it's not Microsoft.
The powerful (business leaders/politicians) cannot make nuclear bombs go away by changing the laws of nuclear warfare. On the other hand, if a coalitions of large IT companies decided to lobby for patent reform, then will probably get whatever laws they want.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Its the sound of the patent system beginning to crash down. RIght now there are two choices
1) Take the fundamentally broken US system and roll it out across the world
2) Take the rest of the worlds approach that software can't be patented and roll it out to the UK
The scary thing is that even with judgements like this and the patent trolls out there we are actually seeing the likes of Microsoft push for option 1.
Patents will be the death of innovation if the system continues in this way, particularly if the US judgements are assessed at insane levels of cost. If Microsoft had known about this patent when starting the development they'd have bought the company for less than this judgement.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
If it is a canadian company doing business in the US then I guess that's ok.
... and Microsoft goes blind
Hire some hitmen to kill the key people behind the patent troll?
Seriously, 250 million, or 25 grand? Doh?
They could so get away with it. Patent trolls have numerous enemies. Everyone hates them.
There is no way the motive could be uniquely pinned on anyone. There are ways to move the money to make it impossible to trace. A large corporation has its money flows divided in so many ways, you can easily scrape together the cash from a hit from multiple sources without any traceability.
I tend to believe these patents are often times too broad, but one of the reasons why they've stuck is due to Microsoft pushing for them to be this way. If this sticks, MSFT is looking to be, in effect, shot by their own gun. The irony is not lost on me.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
--Greg :-)
The patent in question.. Decide for yourselves.
I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what a "writ of certiorari" is - is that a "we're too special to follow the law so please allow us to break it"?
(Yes, yes, I'm going to google it (not Bing! it...) to find out what it really is but I want to make a point before I go...)
Go over to groklaw and look up Microsoft's amici brief in Bilski and you will see MS argue for software patents.
As for patent trolling, there was the incident where MS tried to sell 22 antiLinux patents to patent trolls only to have them intercepted by the OIN.
Oh and TomTom.
I think they feel that if all else fails they can kill linux using patents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Generalized_Markup_Language
"GML frees document creators from specific document formatting concerns such as font specification, line spacing, and page layout required by SCRIPT/VS. Using GML, a document is marked up with tags that define what the text is, in terms of paragraphs, headers, lists, tables, and so forth."
Twenty-five freaking years before i4i's application!
Generalized markup is based on two novel postulates:
1)Markup should describe a document's structure and other attributes, rather than specify the processing to be performed on it, as descriptive markup need be done only once, and will suffice for future processing.
2)Markup should be rigorous so that the techniques available for processing rigorously-defined objects like programs and data bases, can be used for processing documents as well.
Since XML is actually definable in a profile of SGML, I wonder why Microsoft didn't just license from IBM (with whom they have a massive cross-licensing agreement) the old IBM patents and claim *that's* what they were using.
Thank goodness that all of the apps I've ever been involved with date back from the old days when this was all done with SGML. That stuff is probably all out of patent (if it ever was patented) and into the public domain by now.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think it's more likely we'll see tort reform, which will probably make it so that only the most wealthy individuals and corporations can risk a lawsuit. Small companies like i4i will then no longer have options. If we're lucky, the tort reform will also affect patent and copyright trolls, but I'm pretty sure whatever they do to fix it will probably increase the durability of IP overall and generally punish everyone else.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Is this the same Microsoft that just said they're all in favour of respecting others' intellectual property rights? To quote, "We respect trademarks and other people's intellectual property, and look forward to the next steps in the judicial process."
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
The claim is (far as I can tell) for the idea of letting the tags be variables, whose meanings reside in separate lookup table.
The IBM 1980's-era Document Composition Facility combined their SCRIPT/VS product (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRIPT/VS) with their Generalized Markup Language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Generalized_Markup_Language) but also allowed the user to create and use their own set of tags (so ... the tags within a document were variables) if they supplied SCRIPT/VS with a lookup table defining the meanings of the tags.
Either the patent should not have been granted to i4i or i4i's patent claim is something other than what you think it is.
Microsoft already has a work-around. They've been pushing it to their partners since this morning at least:
http://oem.microsoft.com/script/contentpage.aspx?pageid=563214
They will just pay the company 360 million to drop the charges.
haha this makes me laugh. I hate word and think they should stop selling it. It sucks and I hate going to a school with such a horrible word processor. I prefer my OpenOffice
It IS a poster case for the upside of patents. It's not as if Microsoft's RD department came up exactly with the same product without a demo of the patented technology beforehand. It's apparent that MS was demo'd the technology, told the small company to piss off in regards to their license, and then reversed engineered it. This isn't the first time this has happened to MS (Java anyone?). This is the type of thing that irritates me the most. I personally feel that the software patent system is flawed, but then MS goes and does s*%t like this and proponents of the flawed system (trolls and patent attorneys) say "See look the big company is squashing the little guy and the system works". No it doesn't most of the time, but in this case it sure did.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
What exactly is the non-obvious part of the patent in this?
Let me be the first to welcome you to the United States of America. You can pick up your common sense on the way out. Enjoy your stay.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Microsoft released a new Update yesterday to take care of the infringement already.:)
Microsoft Releases 2007 Office Supplement .docx, .docm, or .xml files. The files will open, but any Custom XML elements will be removed. http://oem.microsoft.com/script/contentpage.aspx?pageid=563214
A new supplement for the 2007 Microsoft Office system is required for the United States. After the supplement is installed, Microsoft Office Word will no longer read Custom XML elements contained within
It's one thing to abuse a standards body (not to mention the English language) in order to call your proprietary crap a "standard", but it's another thing to get people to adopt your crappy so-called standard.
Of course, MS doesn't really care if anybody else adopts the standard or not - so long as they can use the words "ISO standard" in their advertising.
The point is, I can be okay with there being an OOXML "standard" as long as nobody else besides MS ends up using OOXML, and as long as the ISO committee isn't totally and permanently ruined as a result of having been used like a sock puppet by MS.
Of course, the ISO committee needs to at least stand up and put a stop to that "drafting errors" nonsense, but hopefully if they did that they could at least continue on with some amount of credibility intact.
Apropos that i4i gets eye for an eye from none other than Microsoft.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."
For those of you who missed the 90's, it was long ago established that M$ just doesn't care, doesn't have to, and won't be stopped or bothered by something as trivial as the government trying to stop them. It is, to laugh. Also good God, if they'd strip of all the asinine bloat XML and other idiotic features it's acquired over the years it might go back to being a pretty damn nifty word processor. Yes MS Word is pretty damn good. Excel ain't bad either. I'm a charter member of the hate and reject M$ club, but that doesn't make all their products bad. DOS 5.0 didn't suck either. (Well, kinda, but really remember the hardware limitations of the era) None of this makes them any less.... "Evil" Embrace extend, violate ignore, pay the fine years later when a few hundred million dollars seems trivial for the internet browser monopoly/operating system monopoly etc. Sure, but anywho, it was long ago demonstrated they don't have to actually answer to anyone as unimportant as Me, You, or the silly Government. Also, do you suppose they'd have to write a check to cover $290,000,000, or is that much cash available in the petty cash box?
An i4i, a tooth for a tooth.
That's some might fine rewriting of history. When Microsoft was selling OOXML to ISO, Microsoft played up the custom XML feature as the biggest innovation since angle brackets. Whenever someone suggested they just use ODF, Microsoft would argue that ODF lacked custom XML support and that this feature was valuable and essential for business process integration. They trotted out business partner after business partner saying how important custom XML was. Now it is dismissed as a little used, obscure feature. Very interesting. So, was OOXML sold to ISO on a fraudulent premise? And btw, "custom XML" is mentioned over 1,000 times in the OOXML specification. Further, note that Microsoft's solution for "fixing" Word is to have it strip custom XML from DOCX files when reading it. So how can you say that the patent has nothing to do with OOXML if the remedy to work around the patent involves removing custom XML from the OOXML documents?
All this doesn't make a whole lot of since to me.Why in gods good name would MS after being told of the patent,offered a licensing deal,say no and implement it anyways??? If i were a stock holder, i wouldn't be to happy and maybe a suit could be brought up against MS for purposely loosing billions in dollars. Someones on a serious power trip thats for sure and wasting stock holders money too.
Jack of all trades,master of none
If this patent is as specific as half the people in this thread state, could such a tiny feature have damaged i4i/gained Microsoft $296,000,000? I know nothing of patent law or XML, but a minor change being worth $296M sounds a bit extreme. Even if the damages were awarded to make an example of MS, I can't imagine either company benefitting 1/10th of that.
Couldn't agree more. While XML is just crappy, but bearable as a document description language, it is an utter failure as a data description language. It ain't really human-readable and it's machine readable with just a lot of effort.
Whether this push for ever more complex XML-based thingies has method or is just aimless madness, the effect is the same: the decommoditizing of our basic constructs.
When will I need XSLT to just make sense of my /etc/passwd?
Just compare the sizes of the XML library on your computer with the size of an interpreter, compiler or any other program in this category (and this other program is most probably doing something useful!)
My favourite comparison is
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 151308 2009-12-13 23:05 /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1.5.2 /usr/lib/liblua5.1.so.0.0.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 147700 2008-01-26 17:36
And in Lua you get a bytecode interpreter, a proper garbage collector and a decent runtime library for free.
XML is a denial of service attack on us.
I just poked through the patent and AFAICT---an acronym all us non-lawyers seem to be falling back on---here's what they patented:
1. You make one file in an unstructured/poorly-structured format.
2. You make an overlay of that file that indicates where markup would have gone, if the format weren't totally braindead.
3. But it is braindead, so you can't get the markup from the file, or leave it there. Instead, you create a map file, which maps content from the separate document file into a markup file.
Because XML is itself processed to create a visual layout (via XSLT)---rather than having the visual layout created separately and then just linked with the XML---this process doesn't cover that. I'm guessing that all the "custom xml" stuff in office was stored in a separate file or in a separate portion of the file, and that's why it infringed.
What's disturbing is that, although this doesn't seem to cover anything widely in use by anybody, it is extremely general. What is patented is basically just any mapped (vs. inline) text structure, and a way to transform mapped structure to inline structure. One might say that this is something like if someone had patented reverse-polish notation. Sure, everybody uses the normal algebraic notation, but what happens when a stack-based machine is invented, and reverse-polish notation suddenly makes a lot of sense?
"in order to use patents as weapons."
I wish I had the balls to make random baseless claims. Clearly you must have seen the future being a wizard and all...
Well then, you shouldn't have let Microsoft's company nurse cut them off just so you could post here. If you're dishonest enough to shill for Bill, take it a step further and just tell him you're shilling and take the money and stop posting here. It saves you work and save our time. If you're shilling for ideological reasons and not getting compensated then maybe it's time to take up a more socially redeeming hobby than shilling.
Microsoft has using software patents offensively for years. The suit over FAT and the suit against TomTom are just two examples from this year. A quick trip to Google will show you more from this year and many other years. If not Google, then Cuil.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.