Injunction Blocks Microsoft From Selling Word

[Daniel ~]

Written by Daniel
Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Wuh oh, Microsoft's in troooooooouble. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Redmond-based software giant has found itself on the receiving end of an injunction (PDF) from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas--and that should ring an alarm bell right there--where Judge Leonard Davis has declared that the company cannot sell a little product called Microsoft Word. [Front page...]

[Gizmo]

Contrary to some of the posts I've seen, i4i (the company owning the patent) are NOT patent trolls; they are a real technology company and have real products.

Further, looking at the patent, it appears they might have real claim. I'm no patent lawyer, but it looks to me like they have a real invention and not just something that they got a patent on before someone else beat them to it. Since Microsoft's .DOC format is not publicly documented anywhere that I am aware of, I can't speak to the validity of the lawsuit itself, but MS very well could have themselves a problem.

[Daniel ~]

As opposed to being one? ":O}

[Áedán]

It's Word 2003/2007 .xml, and Word 2007's .docx and .docm formats that cause the problem as far as I can see. The .docx/.docm files are both heavily XML based, with separate parts describing various aspects of the document.

Mind you, the patent was filed back in 1994 and took until 1998 to make it to patent status.

[Gizmo]

Yeah, but it can't be the XML format itself that is the problem. They've got to be using the XML to describe information at particular points in the document, and using some sort of offset calculation to determine where that information is located.

I wonder how this would affect applications like OpenOffice, which read and write the Microsoft formats for compatibility purposes?

[Daniel ~]

I wonder how this will effect "Open Office"?

[Áedán]

From further reading, it seems that it's a specific thing that MS has implemented, known as Custom XML - basically it seems to be a way of embedded non-Word XML into a Word document.

It doesn't affect OpenOffice, as it doesn't offer any similar feature.

[Daniel ~]

I meant in terms of choice of word processor... Where's the competition now!? ":O}

[dsio]

Nice. Be interesting if MS decided to start fighting software patents due to it rather than paying them off.

[Daniel ~]

Typically they "prey" upon smaller companies that don't have the means to defend themselves...unless it's an MS patent they are defending...most likely one the bought...Am I just being mean? ":O}