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That'll teach people to "Write letterz n smurf, yo."

Not yet. Looks like I'll have to though.

It just reminded the of this old joke.

OH, MAN....I worked for these guys briefly, about 4 or 5 years ago. Their product was mainly targeted to the pharmaceutical industry, for the purpose of authoring XML documents within Word (they sold a Word plugin, essentially).

This comes after a federal jury declared that Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007 custom XML tagging infringed on the plaintiff's—Toronto-based developer i4i—patents, ordering Microsoft to pay $200 million in damages.

I'm very interested to see if these guys get a payday.

Everyone knows that Microsoft would not dare steal or copy from elsewhere.

-mark

BS, obviously.  But I wonder if the judge is a Mac user?

I'm a little unclear what the issue is...is Microsoft claiming some sort of proprietary right over it's use of XML such that others may not use their extensions?

I don't honestly believe XML was intended to be limited in its extensibility that way;  unless of course the claim is MS stole those particular formatting styles.

sturner wrote:

Evidently the other company is claiming proprietary usage of applying formatting styles to XML tags. I couldn't really find a good description of the claim.

Actually, they "invented" reading XML:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars … /5,787,449

So they sued in the infamous U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (well known for giving plaintiffs kajillions of dollars in these kinds of cases) and that's how we got to where we are now.

This same thing happens to Apple all the time in the exact same District Court.

Microsoft can pay the fine and license the technology, or modify Word to strip XML

The courts in East Texas have been booming with patent infringement cases after Judge Leonard Davis started issuing judgments that were more to the liking of small, patent wielding firms as opposed to the liking of the massive companies like Nintendo and Microsoft.

Judge Davis issued a judgment recently that is set to go into effect in mid-October that will bar Microsoft from selling and importing Word in the U.S. in its current form. Davis did give the software giant an out in his judgment to continue selling Word by saying that only versions with support for XML were subject to the ban.

That would mean if Microsoft patches its Word software to strip XML formatting or open documents in plain text it could continue to sell the application in America. Judge Davis' ruling also hit Microsoft with a fine of $240 million for unlawfully infringing upon patent number 5,748,449 owned by i4i technologies covering a "Method and System for Manipulating the Architecture and the Content of a Document Separately from Each Other."

Microsoft has announced that it strongly disagrees with the Davis ruling and plans to file an appeal in the case. That comes as no surprise considering Microsoft Office made about $3 billion for the software giant last year. Rather than issue a patch or not selling Word in America, if Microsoft loses its appeal it could simply license the technology from i4i.

The original suit that i4u brought against Microsoft also sought to bar Windows Vista and the .NET Framework from the U.S. market, but Judge Davis found those products didn’t infringe upon the patent in question. The ruling against Microsoft has raised a number of questions about patents in the software industry. Some feel software should be covered by copyright like books while others feel that a patent is appropriate for software as it is for hardware.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16002

I'm no fan of Microsoft but it sounds like a made up lawsuit to me.  You can't patent the ability to do something...you can only patent the method you used.  Otherwise, nobody would be able to do just about anything.

Last edited by Metacell (2009-08-20 10:44 pm)

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, I need ... to...  breathe. HELP IS REQUESTED STAT.

The plot thickens as the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an Order earlier today granting Microsoft an expedited appeal of its  patent infringement loss to i4i Limited Partnership.  In addition to losing approximately $300 million in a decision handed down on Tuesday, August 11, 2009, Judge Leonard Davis of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas also entered a permanent injunction that will become effective 60 days from the judgment date, ordering Microsoft to cease selling the ubiquitous word processing program Word.  Of course, Microsoft could remove the infringing functionality from Word, which relates to the opening of a file containing custom XML.  Early news reports confidently stated that Microsoft would have absolutely no difficulties accomplishing this task, which were ridiculous on their face, as evidenced by Microsoft scrambling at break-neck speed to secure an expedited hearing in extraordinary fashion.  The oral arguments have been scheduled for Wednesday, September 23, 2009, so it appears as if this matter will be coming to a head sooner rather than later.

The idea that Microsoft could simply remove the infringing aspects of Word within 60 days was fanciful at best. [..]

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/08/21/ca … e/id=5135/