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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."
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
You are wrong. The lawsuit and patent are very narrow and only affect an obscure feature of Microsoft Word that is used by a very small percentage of users. They do not have anything to do with the Office Open XML file format (otherwise this suit wouldn't just be Microsoft Word, it would be all the apps).
i4i's patent is basically XML (yes it really is, read the patent claims).
I think you're wrong. From the coverage I've read, it's a method of processing and manipulating XML documents, and they designed an piece of XML editing software around it which they showed to Microsoft and Microsoft then stole the ideas from.
It does not predate XML, and has nothing to do with XML-based standards. For instance, i4i have stated that they do not believe OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Symphony etc. infringe their patent.
I'm sure some kind person will come along and back me up on this one.
Pirate Party UK
Your post is a load of horseshit and furthers my fears that you're a Microsoft shill (your bing posts are borderline brilliant).
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.
What's your point? That since they're being attacked by a patent troll I should forgive them for everything fucking stupid and backward they've done?
i4i's patent is basically XML (yes it really is, read the patent claims [uspto.gov]).
Your expertise as a patent examiner is priceless to me. As is your extreme simplification of something you know nothing about.
"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.
From the abstract of TFP:
"A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation."
--Greg
On the one hand, it's bad for Microsoft, so slashbot=happy. But it's a Patent win, so slashbot=angry. But it's a win for a small company, so slashbot=happy. But the small company appears to be a patent troll, so slashbot=indignant. But it's band for Microsoft anyway, so slashbot=[error: Stack overflow. Exiting.]
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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.
They're not a patent troll in that way that they did actually come up with the same system before everyone else......i4i was silent for years, everyone started using XML
Sounds like a patent troll to me.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I'm personally shocked, because microsoft doesn't have a reputation of working with smaller companies, failing to close a contract, and then releasing their own very similar products.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Briefly reading over the patent in question, I'm curious how this patient was granted given that it resembles IBM's Generalized Markup Language (GML) from the 1960s and the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) standardized by the ISO in 1986.
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
On the one hand, it's bad for Microsoft, so slashbot=happy. But it's a Patent win, so slashbot=angry. But it's a win for a small company, so slashbot=happy. But the small company appears to be a patent troll, so slashbot=indignant. But it's band for Microsoft anyway, so slashbot=[error: Stack overflow. Exiting.]
As far as I can tell, i4i is not a patent troll -- that is, they developed the technology, and developed and marketed a product based in said technology. In fact, this almost looks like a poster boy case for the upside of patents -- the little boy is using his patent to stop the big boy ripping it off. It would look better if it wasn't for the glacial pace with which the trial and appeal have proceeded.
Pirate Party UK
So you're saying the slashbots should be happy, angry and indignant all at once? That's normal.
You must be new here.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
World of Warcraft uses XML for it's UI
http://www.wowwiki.com/XML_user_interface
Well thank you for pointing that out. Now we know and can proceed to retrieve monetary losses from the only two applications in the history of computing to use the XML format.
Sincerely,
John Phillips Suesalot
CEO of i4i
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 the do that, could this kill the atrocity that is XML? One can only hope.
Seriously - for formatting data, it's overly complex. For storing and transmitting data, plain old config files are easier to read AND easier to parse...
What actual purpose does XML serve?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
It's not going to disappear. i4i has said that certain applications that use XML (Such as Open Office) Do not infringe on their patent. Which means they didn't patent XML, they patented something to do with XML. Which Microsoft used, others do not. Thats why Microsoft is feeling the weight of this and not anyone else.
Since XML was started in '96 by the W3C, and i4i's patent was filed in '98, i4i does not own any of the rights to XML like you are saying.
Yes - Lots of places use XML. However, the chances of it disappearing are even less than the chances of HTML disappearing.
When has prior work ever stopped a patent from being issued?
Amen to parent. I've never quite understood what good XML brought us.
*DrugCheese rants*
What feature?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
... and Microsoft goes blind
Then slashbot happy.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
It seems to me, though, that this covers the use of XML schemas -- at least, if they're constructed under program control.
--Greg
No they are not very narrow.
In the meantime, a company which was issued a patent in 1998 for the idea of maintaining a document's format in a separate file, has been awarded $200 million to a Toronto-based collaborative software firm, whose engineers claim they had the idea first. The case made by i4i Limited Partnership in its March 2007 suit essentially boiled down to the allegation that the entire move toward XML by Microsoft was a willfully executed strategy against i4i.
In 1994, just as HTML was first being investigated elsewhere as a vehicle for networked hypertext, i4i Ltd. applied for its US patent. For the time, its concept was novel as any notion of XML would be years away, and the applications for which XML would be used had yet to be envisioned.
"Electronic documents retain the key idea of binding the structure of the material with its content through the use of formatting information," reads the 1994 patent's background. "The formatting information in this case is in the form of codes inserted into the text stream. This invention addresses the ideas of structure and content in a new light to provide more flexible and efficient document storage and manipulation."
Did i4i create XML? Not specifically, though it did receive a patent for one of its principal ideas, years before the W3C began to come to the same conclusions. However, despite being what many observers at the time considered late to the game in adopting XML, it is Microsoft that ended up the loser in what some analysts are saying could be among the top five willful patent infringement awards in US history. The company has made clear it will appeal the jury's verdict.
Well, on the one hand, the patent gives i4i the right to exclude others from practicing the claimed invention. The court has already told MS that Word is infringing, therefore selling Word would violate the patent rights. MS could simply removing the infringing feature and it could continue selling Word. MS is in control of this aspect.
On the other hand, at the moment, i4i has very little incentive to offer MS any sort of license. i4i won at the lower court and on appeal. Plus, I believe the story goes that they approached MS and MS sent them away and then went ahead and implemented it anyway. They will be able to demand infringement-sized royalties the closer it gets to January 11.
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.
If you read about the issue in more detail, you'll discover that i4i tried for several years to get MS to pay for a patent license, and MS stalled and delayed and equivocated about it. The lawsuit was a last resort, and AFAICT the damages are so high as a punitive measure. In theory, MS shouldn't be able to get away with ripping people off just because they're the big kid in town.
But yes, I'm sure i4i could have done things in a better way -- they're not completely free from blame for this mess.
Pirate Party UK
--Greg :-)
For me, it makes data semantic-free so that it can be passed between systems, and changes on the transmitting end don't fuck up the receiving end. Plus, it's readable.
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
Yes, just change .docx to .zip and see the magic.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
It's an i 4 an i.
But, what's astounding to me, is in 1995 I was using SGML as a method of separating the document content from its layout. The layout wasn't kept in a separate file, but there were mechanisms to apply publishing layout to SGML based on rules. That was the whole point of SGML and its predecessor GML.
Heck, in 1995 Arbor Text had an SGML editor which could apply formatting to SGML documents for the purposes of publishing, and the company I worked for was helping people to install SGML editing and layout systems.
I'm not 100% convinced that these actually represent novel claims. They may not have been described in terms of XML, but the state of the art with SGML sure as hell was doing the whole "maintaining a document's format in a separate file" before this.
Can anyone who understands this a little more identify what specifically is required to infringe on this patent?
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
--Greg :-)
The patent in question.. Decide for yourselves.
The case involves the algorithms MS uses to open and display what they call "custom XML". It does not involve a patent on XML itself, and only affects Office 2003 and 2007, not 2010. Stop being so hysterical.
I'm sure you both don't quite understand XML then. It's about data being accessible in a tree instead of a grid. It has similar benefits to using OO programming over procedural^w^w^w^w^w^w^w^w similar benefits to using highways instead of small streets to travel long distances.
I'm curious how this patient was granted given that it resembles IBM's Generalized Markup Language (GML) from the 1960s and the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) standardized by the ISO in 1986.
To answer your curiosity, it is because existing prior art is not involved with the granting of a patent.
In other words, it doesn't matter if prior art exists or not, in order to get a patent approved.
Prior art is only used as a defense when being challenged by a patent holder.
So if it truly does count as prior art, it is fully up to Microsoft to present it at the patent case to get the patent thrown out.
That can't happen until after Microsoft is sued for patent violation, which in turn can't happen until someone files for a patent on it.
Since both of those items have come to pass, the question now is, why didn't Microsoft use that as prior art to halt the trial?
The two options that come to mind are
a) They didn't know about it, or
b) they did and tried, but the judge said it was not valid as prior art.
On one hand, being Microsoft I would be shocked if A was the case.
However, on the other hand, being Microsoft it is not too shocking.
What? The USPTO would beg to differ. You need to declare any prior art you are aware of [duty of disclosure] or the patent can be invalidated for inequitable conduct.
Furthermore, the patent examiner is *required* to make a search for prior art during the review process.
Please, if you're going to be a slashdot lawyer (IANAL but I play one on Slashdot), do some quick googling before posting absolutely false tripe like that.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You're not alone.
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In 1995 I designed and built (most of) the software for the following CD-ROM:
"Berg, J. van den, Duijfjes-Vellekoop, G.G.J., Kunenborg, R. & Tenback, R. (1995). Marburger Index Datenbank, ein Wegweiser zur Kunst in Deutschland (CD-ROM). Munchen: K.G. Saur Verlag. " (*)
It included several internal parsers, including one for a HTML-like language that separated the content of the database from the on-screen expression. Basically, my own miniature implementation of Mozilla.
It was sold in musea throughout Germany.
I guess that should count as prior art. I'm pretty sure we could dig up the sourcecode if asked nicely.
(*) As an aside, I'm still pretty proud of that software. It runs like a charm on anything from windows 3.11 to Vista, will stay stable even with less than 1 KB of free memory (windows crashes before this program does) and we never had to do a bugfix. Written in around 20000 lines of C++. Chalk one up for rigorously applying and checking invariants and pre- and postconditions.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
A writ of certiorari is a request from a higher court to a lower one informing it that it wants to review the case at hand, and that all records and transcripts from the trial should be sent from the lower court to the higher one.
Filing a request for writ of certiorari with the US Supreme Court is in essence a fancy way of saying "We're attempting to appeal to the US Supreme Court". There is, of course, no guarantee that the Court would take the case, the success on petitions for certiorari is something on the order of 1%.
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.
I despise Microsoft, and wish they'd been broken up and Gates and Ballmer put behind bars for what they've done, but this patent is still absurd. The concepts have been around for forty years. The patent office is full of inept halfwits, and Microsoft's big failing here is that it's too cowardly to finally put its money into wiping out software patents.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
It's been a while but if I remember the i4i product allows you to author data in MS Word based on a document type definition (DTD). The use of Word to do so is not new. Another small Ottawa Canada based company, Microstar Software, were first to do so with their product called Near & Far Author for Microsoft Word (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-16732008.html). This the same company that brought Near & Far view, a graphical view of SGML DTD, to market. They started working on Author around 1994-1995 time frame. I joined MIcrostar's Research Dept. in late 1995, so I can't say for sure when they started. Matt?
Author would take an SGML DTD and create a Word template that embodied the grammar defined by the DTD. This template along with a special plug-in would guide the user through the document creation process. The document's validity was verified using James Clark's SP SGML Parser Tool Kit, which was compiled into the plug-in.
Authoring was part plug-in and part Word Basic, such that when Microsoft switched to VB Script in Word 6, or there about, the product was not ported to the newer version of Word since sales were not as expected and it would have meant investing significant resources, for a small company, to make it compatible with Word 6.
a) the ideas to be stolen by Microsoft.
Profit! ($290M)
b) be bought out by Microsoft.
Profit!
c) be "corporate cannibalized" by Microsoft.
Profit?
d) ALL OF THE ABOVE!
Profit!?
In addition, instead of violating someone else's patent (like the last two instances in under two weeks of violating someone's copyrights by stealing code), they could have just hmmm... this is a tough one....
OH! I remember... they could have just licensed the patent/code/whatever like numerous other companies do in similar situations. So, I dont feel bad about this happening to them. They've done the steal/"borrow" code and ideas thing numerous times in the past...
My only worry is that they get this overturned because of the "economic harm" or some other nonsense - or run this company out of business with the cost of appeals until a settlement is reached. It's high time they are found guilty of (and punished for) such crimes.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
That may be true, but there are better options these days, less verbose, easier to parse, etc, like YAML.
The problem is, there's YAML, and there's JSON, and there are S-expressions, and a dozen other ad-hoc formats; and no-one can agree on which one of the "better" formats to use as the data exchange format.
Consequently, there is no single standard JSON or YAML or ... parser in Java libraries, or in Qt - you need to get a third-party one (and to do so, you need to pick one of the umpteenth alternatives for your platform).
Meanwhile, with XML: any language and any platform today has at least a basic parser as a standard component, so there's no need to pick, and no extra dependencies (pure ISO C/C++ being an exception, but people rarely code in that; otherwise, there is a "standard" XML parser in Win32, there's one in Qt, there's one in GNOME, etc). There's rich tooling available - for example, you can write an XSD or RELAX NG schema, and any of dozen editors and IDEs (including Emacs) can use it to drive code completion. You can trivially process and combine heterogeneous XML data using XSLT. And so on.
Yes, the format is far from perfect. Some things are inconsistent, some (e.g. DTDs) are effectively deprecated but still have to be supported, some are overly complicated. XML Schema in particular is an overengineered mess (but gladly we have RELAX NG). But overall, for all its flaws, it still does the job, and the interoperability benefits of everyone using it are worth the minor pain.
"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."
(BTW checking this took a huge effort, and big searching and I'm still not sure it's the whole truth. It's astounding how much of the media, both "main stream" and alternative/blog is covering this whilst trying to pretend that i4i never did anything useful at all.)
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I propose to use JSON in all ajax-style applications instead of XML.
I can agree for that particular use case.
It's superior in nearly every way.
Depends on the usage. See below.
You'd be surprised how many ready-made parsers there are at json.org.
So, how do I pick the best one (or at least the "good enough" one) to use? The one that I can trust to be fully compliant, and that will be kept maintained and ported to new language/framework versions? Let's say, I need one for C++.
That's not necessarily true...
You misunderstand me. What I meant is that there are kinds of XML documents in which tags take up the minority of the content, and the majority is text. XHTML is a classic example; DocBook is another one. Essentially any scenario in which the basis is text, and the tags are markup on that text. Your SCORM example (that brings back some very unpleasant memories, by the way - I had to deal with this cursed thing) is about as far from it as it can get.
Now, for text markup, you can still represent it as JSON (after all, it's still a tree) - but just imagine how messy even a simple XHTML example would look that way.
Oh, by the way - JSON sample code in your post isn't actually JSON. In particular, you need to quote all keys, i.e. rather than:
identifier: "resource1"
you have to write:
"identifier": "resource1"
The only unquoted JSON identifiers are literals "true", "false", and "null". See RFC 4627 for reference (though the grammar on http://json.org/ also covers this).
1897, but then that A.Einstein quit and got a real job.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
In no way does it seem to me i4i matches a patent troll. I agree that the idea that someone can own such a trivial idea is dumb, but the patent is not "obvious" just because there are so many stupid different variants you could do which would achive the same thing differently. This is not something wrong in the patent system. This is the patent system working exactly as it is designed. If you don't like this, then you should be campaigning to get rid of software patents.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();